Art Residency – Vientiane, Laos

Life can be full of surprises.
If you’d told me 2 years ago I’d have an art residency in a gallery in Vientiane the capital of Laos, there’s no way I’d have believed you. Yet a few months later, I found myself cycling through the bustling, potholed streets of one of my favourite places on earth, with charcoal, fixative and a gallery front door key in my backpack, on my way to complete a 4.7m wide charcoal drawing in one room of the i:cat gallery downtown Vientiane.

“Meet the artist at work”, the publicity stated. More than once, with dance music pounding through headphones, I glanced round to find a tourist, a Lao art institute student, or curious passerby off the street standing behind me as a I paced (one might even say danced), charcoal in hand before the 4.2 wide x 1.2 tall sheet of paper mounted on the wall. Check out this short vid recording the four days it took to complete the drawing in the gallery. Let me know what you think in the Comments section below.

When working on such a large scale, the process of drawing is very physical, almost a dance.

In the early stages, I employed the use of a bamboo stick to enable me to simultaneously stand back to see the work, while at the same time, make large gestural marks across the white paper. The title of the drawing is “Slowboat” – my two friends and I had taken the slowboat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang the week before arriving in Vientiane.
Below are some images of the process of my time in the gallery through to the drawing’s completion. I returned to the UK on December 7th leaving “Slowboat” on display in the i:cat gallery through to the new year.