Ichnographia: arrogation and alteration

This thesis is a meta-commentary that accompanies a portfolio of
artworks produced over the course of the research project; one that
explores tracing and the traced as a creative process in drawing.
Despite the fact that there is notable information regarding tracing’s
preparatory role within the history of drawing (Bambach, 1999), there
is little research regarding the shift of its role towards an independent
and creative end in drawing today. Consequently, I see tracing as a
process for drawing that is continually open to question and
exploration.
The research takes the view that the reworking of pre-existing cultural
products and models arguably now replaces the idea of originality and
the new (in the sense of starting from zero) (Bourriard, 2002), a
perspective which suggests that there are only specific re-readings and
no originative readings. (Derrida, 1976) Within this context, I suggest
that tracing in drawing has now, by way of its character, become an
exemplary process which can challenge a long standing dialectic: that of
the measure of the eye and its judgment, contrasted with mechanical
means and the execution of the hand. I believe that this offers up an
argument for speculation on a centrality of tracing within drawing now.
Overall, the writing addresses a central question, namely what can
account for a consideration of tracing as a creative agent in drawing
today? It also gives the theoretical means needed to understand the
underlying reasoning, preoccupations, and concerns behind the
submitted work and provides supplementary information about the
drawings and paintings developed as part of this research, thereby
offering up a new perspective of tracing’s cultural assumptions for those
involved with the history and practice of drawing.