In September 2025, DRAW Space presents a new performance by Laith McGregor in collaboration with Joel Cooper - a large scale drawing, an elusive portrait, a silent conversation.
Performance:
Friday 12 September, 4pm until late
The work and associated materials will be exhibited until 14 September, 5pm.
Art guides a shared gathering of ideas to harness the imagination, to talk of the unseen, and grapple with issues that are difficult to put into words. It is a way of communicating that creates space to transform and challenge our perception. Throughout human history, art has been the one consistent language that allows humans to navigate the lived experience, to look for the gravitas of truth, to question the existence and that which cannot be explained. Art gives us a sense of the moment, of the now, it’s a way of connecting and sharing ideas through the sensory, a way to surrender and explore the in-between collectively. More importantly, art is the key to guide, and search for answers of why we are here. These ideas are often explored through the drawing and the line.
But how does one locate this grey area between fact and fiction, the real and the unreal, what is right and what is wrong, and all things binary? It is these contradictory oppositions that we all must navigate, with an unrelenting slippage between the two. We could look at life like train tracks, running off into the distance, parallel to each other, but working together to propel a momentum. In order to move forward, one can simply not exist without the other, here, a new space is created linking these polar opposites. We must ask ourselves, how do these parallels function in daily life and within a broader cultural environment? And how do we manoeuvre in this seemingly paradoxical space? Are we to feel our way through life living on the tightrope between binaries or embrace what is in-between?
‘The durational performance will embrace an intuitive reaction of the subconscious. Looking for the language of the in-between.’
Draw Space will offer a stage for myself and fellow collaborator Joel Cooper to simultaneously engage, interact and welcome a durational performance exploring the conceptual framework of the line. Here, we will walk the tightrope that isn’t there, perform a song, that isn’t a song, a dance, that isn’t a dance and have a conversation, that isn’t a conversation. This performance is about the in-between, that space that cannot be grasped, yet is there, ready to be interpreted. The performance will occur in two parts, in chorus. A large-scale wall drawing of charcoal on raw canvas will dominate the space, played out in realtime, slowly building with expressive lines to create an elusive portrait of mass proportions. Concurrently, a mime will act out, imitate, juggle, read, sleep, think, perform, search, query, navigate and simply be, in the space, mirroring the artist, but inhabiting his own arena, bringing the two together to explore the grey area that exists betwixt. The durational performance will embrace an intuitive reaction of the subconscious. Looking for the language of the in-between.
“Mime goes beyond movement, it goes really deep in the human soul, it shows the interiority, the feelings we have, the emotions, even through immobility, and then we can feel the flow of time, like we feel it in music when we feel the sound. Mime is similar to graphic art, because we draw in space, like the painter draws on a canvas.” Marcel Marceau
As an artist, I keep asking myself, am I essentially a mime, creating something out of nothing, forming a world that isn’t there, building a space that is analogous to the real, but entirely up for interpretation? Perhaps I am, perhaps I need to have a further conversation with the subliminal. A conversation that brings the two together. I think everyone could do with a healthy conversation to share and bring forth a positive momentum, to draw parallels. To draw a line between one idea to the next, to form new ideas. Shall we? Shall we draw? Shall we have a conversation?
‘ … I keep asking myself, am I essentially a mime, creating something out of nothing, forming a world that isn’t there, building a space that is analogous to the real, but entirely up for interpretation?’
Laith McGregor, 2025
Untitled Support (2), 2024, charcoal, pins and walking cane in custom frame, 76 x 56cm. Document Photography
Biography
Working across drawing, painting and sculpture, Laith McGregor’s multidisciplinary practice reflects an ongoing inquiry into contemporary portraiture, semiotics of image making and notions of the self. With pieces incorporating laborious, hyper-realistic illustration, accumulations of pencil and eraser shavings, and other processes that form a meditative daily ritual, his practice is resolutely underpinned by a commitment to physical studio work and the marking of time. McGregor’s works wrestle with the grey area that exists between fiction and non-fiction, negative and positive, black and white, two- and three- dimensions, serving an ongoing inquiry into the complexities of what it means to be human.
McGregor achieved success early in his career for his intricately drawn works, using ballpoint pen and pencil, winning the Robert Jacks Drawing Prize (2008), the Qantas Foundation Encouragement of Australian Contemporary Art Award (2009), and the Emerging New Work Grant by The Australia Council for the Arts (2009). Since then, he has been the winner of the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award, Paul Guest Drawing Prize (2018), National Works on Paper Prize (2012), and the Paul Guest Memorial Prize (2018), and a finalist in many other prizes. He has participated in numerous residencies including Art Omi New York, HIAP Helsinki and the Barcelona Studio residency through the Australian Council for the Arts. He has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally, and is represented in significant institutional collections. McGregor was included in the recent Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 2022: FREE STATE, at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Represented by STATION Gallery, Sydney/Melbourne, Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand & Tripoli Gallery, New York.