Danica Maier Re / draw
Danica Maier Re / draw
Exhibition Preview: 6-10pm, Thursday 22 February, 2024 no booking required, all welcome)
BEAM Nottingham
15 February –6 April 2024
Thursday–Saturday, 9am–5pm
or by appointment
Re/draw is our first exhibition by long-standing Beam collaborator Danica Maier. The centre-piece for the exhibition is a 5 x 3 m artwork drawn directly onto the wall by the artist over four days.
These epic drawings are synonymous with the artist’s practice having produced similar work in museums and galleries throughout the UK. The exhibition also includes a number of smaller pencil drawings on aluminium panels that draw upon the last 10 years of the artist’s practice.
At first glance the large wall drawing appears like a repeat wallpaper, but with closer observation the work reveals that it is not a mechanically repeated pattern, but a drawing that captures the natural variations of the artist’s hand. While the pattern creates the impression of a ‘repeat’, the hand-rendered nature of the process means it never actually repeats. With time the work reveals glitches and variations which invites you to consider the material details of the highly familiar items that surround us and craft that is embedded in our domestic worlds.
Born in 1973 in Delaware, USA, Maier’s work references and celebrates the decorative arts traditions synonymous with art and crafts produced by women in the domestic environment. Maier’s drawings translate methods found in textile weaving, ceramics and embroidery into her drawings which results in images that are constructed from highly intricate networks of lines. With even closer inspection these lines are repeats of a single word. Playfully these words include slang and derogatory words for female genitalia or other words that relate to specific works.
Birds, foliage and flowers appear throughout the work referencing familiar themes associated with the decorative arts. Maier’s delicate and ethereal drawings of flowers float on their aluminium surface. These are contrasted by a series of geometric drawings that almost vibrate, which reference the memory of a native american woven rug from Maier’s grandparents home. Other works include a two panel work that reference the iconic blue and white ‘Willow’ ceramics that first appeared in the UK in the 1700s inspired by original folkloric chinese designs.
Many of the reference points in Maier’s work are highly familiar but the construction of the work is not. Initially the drawings present themselves with a decorative aesthetic, but each work is underpinned with a conceptual and poetic approach that is grounded in a contemporary art practice.
The work reflects upon the often disregarded history of women in the arts, the blurry lines between art, design, craft and decorative arts and the hidden histories of arts of the domestic realm.
Danica Maier is artist and Associate Professor in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University. Maier Studied FIne Art at Beaver College, Philadelphia, Glasgow School of Art and MA in textiles at Goldsmiths.
In recent years Maier has exhibited and performed at Lincoln Museum, Nottingham Contemporary, Ruskin Gallery Cambridge alongside international venues in Paraguay, Pakistan, Germany and USA.