Join us for the Line/Extended Panel Discussion where experts in the field of visual arts, illustration, maths and psychology will be discussing their perspectives on line and drawing. The discussion will close with a Q&A.

Timetable

3.45pm                 Arrive and take seats

4.00pm                 Short talks and panel discussion

6.00pm                 Close

Four talks

The Travelling Salesman Problem

Dr Catarina Carvalho is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics in the School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics. 

In the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP), a salesman has to plan a route through a number of cities, starting indenting at the same city, visit every city just once while minimising the distance he travels. There is no known algorithm efficient algorithm that always returns the optimal solution in a reasonable time, and in fact, a lot of Mathematicians and Computer Scientists believe that no such algorithm exists. Planning a, not necessarily optimal,  route for the salesman can be done by joining closest cities with lines, and these lines can often lead  to works of art.

An Apology for Scribblers

Thom Cuschieri, Senior Lecturer in Illustration

This talk will present the case for the unpolished scribble, the unfinished sketch and the unplanned squiggle. I will discuss the role and remit of such work in the context of contemporary illustration and present the ways in which my own interest in the scrawled line has influenced my personal work and my approach to teaching illustration in the age of digital brushes and the undo button

An Artists Practice

Rosana Antolí, exhibiting artist

The artist will talk about her current installation, Chaos Dancing Cosmos and previous works. Chaos Dancing Cosmos is a site-specific installation with rubber and motors, where a concrete drawing or trace is translated to the tridimensional space.

Psychology of Drawing

Dr Shivani Sharma, Head of the Psychology Subject Group and Executive Lead for Equality and Diversity, School of Life and Medical Sciences

Shivani will be talking about the power of drawing - an activity that is familiar to children - as a useful aid to researchers as a window into the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of children about a range of topics. Through her work, she wants to understand how people are impacted by and cope with health related experiences and how we can support them better. Much of her work has focused on health inequalities for people who are under-represented in research. She is also interested in prevention of health problems and has applied the ‘draw-write-and tell’ method to find out about complex ideas and beliefs held by children.

About the Speakers

Dr Catarina Carvalho is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics in the School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics. She joined the University of Hertfordshire in 2010, after an FCT Postdoctoral Fellowship in Mathematics at the University of Lisbon and postdoc position in Computer Science at Durham University, and SFU, Canada. Dr Carvalho obtained her PhD in 2006 from St Andrews University in the area of Combinatorial Semigroup Theory, and currently researches mainly in the area of Universal Algebra and its connections with Computational Complexity.

Thom Cuschieri is Senior Lecturer in Illustration at the University of Hertfordshire. His own practice typically involves the design and creation of esoteric, illustrated books where he often draws from his background in abstract mathematics. He is currently working on a book about imaginary chess moves, though he does occasionally dabble in commercially viable material.

Rosana Antolí (born 1981) is a Spanish-born, London based artist. She graduated with an MA in Performance (Department of Sculpture), Royal College of Art, London, 2015. She works across drawing, sculpture, video and performance to interact with and observe our movements, creating patterns out of ordinary human actions. Her practice examines the role of social choreography and movement in relation with art. Repetition, politics and everyday choreographed poetics are the axis of her work. Antolí has been exhibiting galleries and museums worldwide including Tate Modern,​Tate Exchange (London, UK. 2019), CCCC Museum (Valencia, Spain. 2019); since 2015 until 2018 Antolí was selected Member of Royal British Society of Sculptors in London, UK and since 2015, she is International Advisory Board for the Institute of Social Choreography.

http://rosanaantoli.com/

Dr Shivani Sharma, MBPsS, PGCert, FHEA, CPsychol. Dr Shivani Sharma is Head of the Psychology Subject Group and Executive Lead for Equality and Diversity in the School of Life and Medical Sciences. She is also a Health Services Researcher focusing on how psychosocial issues affect people living with long-term health conditions.


Line/Extended brings together five artists whose work explores the potential of the drawn line and the expanded field of drawing. The exhibition investigates a more interrogative approach to drawing – one that extends outwards into a variety of mediums and disciplines. Artists Rosana Antolí, Lucy Brown, George Eksts, Jane Grisewood and Andrea V Wright – whose works span traditional drawings on paper through to performative and site-specific pieces made especially for this exhibition – take their various lines for a walk around the three-dimensional space of the gallery.

The exhibition coincides with the national Big Draw Festival – the world’s biggest celebration of drawing.