Jacqui Stockdale: Drawing the labyrinth

Jacqui Stockdale’s Drawing the labyrinth comprises more than one hundred metres of drawings presented in a fold-out concertina sketchbook set out on tables and configured in the form of a labyrinth. This continuous length of drawings reflects the artist’s intimate journey over a twelve month period, variously depicting moments spent travelling across Europe, incorporating a diverse array of portraits such as friends, family members, self-portraits, anonymous people on trains, teenagers in their classrooms, a live band on stage, even a woman giving birth. Making these sketches Stockdale seeks a direct connection with her subject, often drawing people she has spontaneously approached and invited to sit for her. Her mark making is a free and fluid process – embracing chance and happenstance within the overall composition – the artist comments that ‘like life, you go forward and work with the mistakes’. Stockdale’s labyrinth evokes the unfolding, serendipitous nature of experience and the ways that we share and comprehend existence as a series of intersecting observations and evolving narratives.