November 2012

This was our second visit to DOX Gallery this year – this time it was to provide visuals on the roof terrace for an evening event held by Česká Pojišťovna to celebrate the company’s 185th anniversary. We set up three Tagtools – which meant that in addition to the two walls of the terrace we could also do some Tagtool drawing on the wall behind Martin Mikuláš‘s DJ console.I made the drawing in the photo above in order to ‘cover up’ Petr Motyčka‘s ‘Shoe Christ’, and just left this one image in place for the whole of the evening. This meant that we could concentrate on making a sequence of drawings using the other two Tagtools and it was great that Jan was able to come to draw with me as this meant that I didn’t have to work on two big drawings simultaneously all of the time! Below are two photos that I took of some of Jan’s work.As the temperature was much lower than it was in April on our previous visit to DOX, the patio heaters on the terrace were very welcome but because of the cold most people stayed in the bar and only went out onto the terrace to smoke.I began the evening by making the drawings below on the wall opposite the bar.And here are some more photos of drawings that I did later on in the evening….It would have been nice if the weather had been warmer – but the roof terrace at DOX is such a great place for Tagtooling that the cold wasn’t a problem for me!

[vimeo=vimeo.com/53208746]
The performance at Galerie Rudolfinum lasted for an hour but for this video Dima speeded it up so you can see the whole thing in only six minutes! The soundtrack for the video is taken from the live music by Hey!zeus and Radimo and was recorded at the event by Dima.

This week we gave a Tagtool performance as one of the Thursday evening events that have been arranged to accompany the current exhibition, ‘Beyond Reality, British Painting Today’, at the Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague.As the photo above shows, the central hall of this important neo-renaissance building in Prague is elaborately decorated in various shades of cream, mushroom and brown, with all the columns and cornice picked out in blue and gold – a very grand and prestigious location indeed for Tagtooling!We used the gallery’s own powerful (and very expensive) Epson projectors for the performance, although as you can see in the photos above, mounting them on our tripods required some on-the-spot D.I.Y. adaptations by Dima. It was great to be able to use these big projectors as they gave a very bright image with beautiful strong colours – a clear case of expensive, high quality equipment producing the best possible result! From my position on the staircase landing I had a clear and unobstructed view of what I was drawing and with the two big Epson projectors it was possible for me to draw over the whole length of the upper part of the wall opposite.During the performance the audience sat or stood at the bottom of the stairs and, as they were hidden from my view while I was drawing, it was almost as if I was alone in the auditorium and the musicians, London-based Hey!zeus and Czech saxophonist Radimo, were playing just for me – which was really great!
Hey!zeus and Radimo were playing on the half landing of the stairway so that they too had an unobstructed view of the drawing in progress and I am sorry that I only have this very grainy photo of them to post on the blog.Although recently I have been using tracks from their LP for some practice drawing sessions at home, it was the first time that we had all worked together. The sound quality in the auditorium (provided by the company Vice Audio) was excellent and the live music was a really exciting and stimulating accompaniment for drawing.
I will end this post with a few photos and post Dima’s video of the performance tomorrow. (It’s uploading now as I write this!).