The Performing Pencil: Donna Huddleston and Jennifer Higgie in conversation
Spring Term, sees the return of the Royal Drawing School series of Creative Conversations; online dialogues between artists, curators and writers. Curated by Dr Claudia Tobin, lectures are held Wednesday evenings live on Zoom.
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Jennifer Higgie interviews Donna Huddleston about her new solo exhibition at Simon Lee Gallery, her approach to portraiture and her thoughts on the power of drawing to describe imaginary and real worlds.
Donna Huddleston, 'The Serbian', Caran d’ache on paper and handmade textured glass, 49 x 43cm, Courtesy of the artist © Donna Huddleston
Donna Huddleston is an Australian artist who lives in London. Her solo exhibition ‘In Person’ runs until 26 February at Simon Lee Gallery, London. Her intensely detailed drawings are inspired by a range of influences that span the worlds of film, theatre, literature, design and the visual arts. Her media includes Caran d’ache colour pencil, metal-point, watercolour and graphite. Rich with incident and gesture, Huddleston’s drawings and objects intermingle memory, spectral presences and ambiguous comedy. Scissors, an empty but self-replicating room, a line of dancing cowgirls, a gargantuan papier-mâché shell beached on soap, a deranged actress with the bearing of a Tudor duchess – the theatrical world depicted in Huddleston’s work is a tense and emotionally volatile place.
Jennifer Higgie is an Australian writer who lives in London. Previously the editor of frieze magazine and the presenter of Bow Down, a podcast about women in art history, she is the author and illustrator of the children’s book There’s Not One; the editor of The Artist’s Joke and author of the novel Bedlam. Her latest book, The Mirror & The Palette: 500 Years of Women’s Self Portraits is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. She is currently working on a book about women, art and the spirit world and also writes screenplays. She has been a judge of the Paul Hamlyn Award, the Turner Prize, and a member of the advisory boards of Arts Council England, the British Council Venice Biennale Commission, the Contemporary Art Society and the Imperial War Museum Art Commissions Committee.
Cover image: Donna Huddleston, 'Costume Drama', Caran d’ache pencil, 100 x 145cm, Courtesy of the artist/ Simon Lee Gallery © Donna Huddleston