[WORKSHOP] Drawing ‘Life’ (POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE)

Due to overwhelming response, UMAG is organising another drawing workshop with Philippe Charmes. Please note that this workshop was offered previously on 7 December and 14 December 2019.

What can we learn from a skeleton? For centuries, art institutions like the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris have provided their students with facilities resembling medical research labs or science museums, where artists can spend hours observing and drawing a wide variety of human and animal anatomical specimens—those ideal, realistic and atypical. A skeleton is, in brief, a being in its most naked form, key for studying life from both an artistic and scientific approach.

Art and science have always been bound in a complex relationship related to the study and understanding of reality in its various dimensions. In collaboration with the UMAG exhibition Jen Bervin: Silk Poems and Dr. Benoit Guénard from the HKU School of Biological Sciences, this series of drawing workshops conducted by French artist Philippe Charmes will introduce the duality of life by closely studying the anatomy of living beings. From a direct analysis of shapes and volumes to a reflection on our very nature as beings, participants will be guided through the process of drawing the selected specimens.

Designed to provide direct experiential and reflective learning for participants, the workshops aim to create a practice-based and interdisciplinary space where artistic and scientific approaches converge and diverge, thereby questioning the boundaries set between art and science which are in dialogue with the current exhibition. 

"Drawing is like thinking, it's a pure product of the mind, the fruit of a long patience. Drawing doesn't only find, it comes back on the scene of its quest." Jean Clair

Date: Sunday, 16 February 2020

Time: 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Venue: 1/F Fung Ping Shan Building, University Museum and Art Gallery, HKU, 90 Bonham Road, Pokfulam

Audience and Limit: Aged 18 or above, maximum 12 people per class

Language: English

Registration & Enquires: Registration opens from 14 January to 12 February 2020. Course fee is HK$100 per participant. For enquiries, please contact Ms Chelsea Choi: cchelsea@hku.hk / 2241 5509.

Please click here for the application form.

Instructor: Philippe Charmes

Born in Paris, Philippe Charmes graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg in France. He now lives and works in Hong Kong. For over twenty years he has worked as a draftsman, painter, sculptor and performer. His major source of inspiration has been the intimate relationships between human beings, which he details through the structure and interaction of human forms and society. Drawing has been his work's primary axis, through which he reflects his observations, thoughts and philosophical ideas about his varied subjects.

Students’ works from the previous workshop.