NEAC Annual Lecture 2025

Thursday 12 June, 6pm for 6:30pm start

6pm: Doors

6.30pm: Lecture start

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to catch a remarkable exhibition at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne curated by the artist Liza Dimbleby, along with her father, the journalist and television presenter and now President of the Towner, David Dimbleby. The exhibition was entitled “Drawing the Unspeakable” and it brought together 300 drawings by many well known 20th and 21st century artists including, to mention just a few, David Bomberg, Louise Bourgeois, Edward Burra, Barbara Hepworth, Ken Kiff, L.S. Lowry, and Paula Rego. The theme, as the title implies, was that of drawing subjects that are painful and traumatic including death, torture, sexual abuse, incarceration and all manner of suffering. The drawings came mostly from memory and imagination.

We at the NEAC often emphasise the value we place on the practice of drawing, but arguably we tend to always stress the kind of drawing that is done whilst directly observing a motif, rather than that which comes entirely from a subjective and emotional state. The latter type of drawing could be based on a memory or come from the recesses of the unconscious mind including from dreams and nightmares. The results may be raw and less technically accomplished, but equally they may convey a form of passionate expression vital to the artist’s creativity and beyond the reach of words.

For those of you who missed the exhibition, this is a unique opportunity to take a virtual tour of it with its co-curator as your guide. For those who saw it, here’s a wonderful chance to revisit it and to learn more about the ideas and choices that went into its creation with Liza Dimbleby herself.

Patrick Cullen PNEAC

Images: John Davies, Houses on Fire, 2001-02 (detail); Liza Dimbleby, as photographed by Peter Hallward; Ken Kiff, Sun above Houses and Shadowy Dog, 1986