Top alumni artists in Brighton exhibition

Works by internationally acclaimed artists Rachel Whiteread CBE and Sir Antony Gormley will feature in a new exhibition coming to the University of Brighton in March.

‘Marks Make Meaning: drawing across disciplines’ focuses on the diversity of drawing and running alongside the exhibition will be a series of events sponsored by the University’s Brighton Creative Futures, which provides a focus for research and enterprise activity.

Open to the public, the exhibition is hosted by the University’s School of Art and its new Drawing Research and Enterprise Group (REG), and is being held at the University’s gallery in Grand Parade, Brighton.

University graduate Rachel Whiteread, one of Britain’s leading artists and sculptors, was the first woman to win the Turner Prize and received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University in 1998.

Antony Gormley OBE, creator of the Angel of the North, taught at the University’s former Brighton College of Art. Both started their careers in Brighton.

Marks Make Meaning will honour celebrated University alumni and will showcase the range of drawing research and practice across the University. It will also be a platform for collaborative projects with external partners.

There are three main strands to the event: space and place, health and wellbeing, and education and learning. There will be workshops and talks from experts including Isabel Seligman from the British Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings, consultant hand surgeon Donald Sammut, Royal Academy of Art’s environmental artist Emma Stibbon, printmaker/painter and University lecturer Tom Hammick, and Emeritus Professor and children’s author John Vernon Lloyd.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Philippa Lyon, from the Drawing REG and Duncan Bullen, Deputy Head of the School of Art. He said: “Drawing practices, from explanatory sketches and diagrams through to maps, prints, plans and much more, are fundamental to many disciplines and professions.

“They are deeply embedded across the arts, architecture and many other design subjects and are also part of learning in subjects as wide-ranging as engineering and medicine. In the context of an international growth in drawing research, Brighton’s particular focus is on the understanding and applications of drawing.”

There will be a private view on 9 March and the exhibition will be open to the public from 12 to 29 March.

For more information and to book attendance, go to:

• Marks Make Meaning symposium – 13 March 
• Drawing and Health Seminar – 14 March