Sophie
Standford
About
A Rural Idyll
In the Forest Garden
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
On paper
In sound

@hortus_silvam

Work on paper Selected Works

Performative Drawing Series
In the Performative Drawings series, each drawing is an improvised performance whose duration is complete when the artist’s gestures meet physical exhaustion (around 2-3 minutes). The full body is engaged, but the paper is not observed at all in the process, to disassociate herself from any visual control over the drawing process. 

The final drawing brings together the mark making implement and the way it is held, with the paper surface and its location in the performance space. As the pencil moves, perception and emotion at that moment are driven into other areas of knowing, resonating on a deeper level; a mirror to processes within the body.

The drawings take on an audible quality as they tend towards a mass of energised, entangled vibrations.

This approach to drawing is part of ongoing research into the relationship between the visual and the auditory, with particular reference to music performance: its visual form or written music notation, the performance of music as improvisation and the physical and psychological moment of performance experienced by the soloist on the concert platform.


graphite, paper
60x42cm

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Drawing as musical graphic score A graphic musical score is made from the ‘performative drawing’ process forming a mono print, which is randomly cut up and assembled into the form of a concertina book, to lead a performance from left to right, start to finish. The act of giving the graphic score to the performer brings about the possibility of sound, and at this point the score is complete.

© Sophie Standford, 2025
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