“Radically Rhythmic”
The Dover prize opportunity comes at not only an ideal time but is a very appropriate place for my collaborative project, “The Sketchbook and the Collider” to undergo new transformations. A collaboration with an award-winning particle physicist professor Kostas Nikolopoulos from the University of Birmingham It has evolved significantly from its initial attempts to find equivalents between the language of drawing and the interaction of fundamental particles. It needs this opportunity to move out of the Midlands and run workshops nationally to test its basic assumption that insights from particle physics, which sound unconnected with everyday life, but which could nevertheless provide the basis for a sea change in our attitude to the environment.
What better place than somewhere intimately connected with, not only the industrial revolution, but also cutting-edge innovation underlying particle physics and the study of the origins of the universe centred at Durham University. Only 39 miles away from the UK’s deep underground facility at Boulby where my collaborating physicist is overseeing detection experiments for dark matter.
The crucial global issue is our fractured relationship with the planet. Yet we know from particle physics that everything in the universe is created from the same particle interactions: Black, white or brown, human or non-human, living or inanimate, all comprise the same rhythmically vibrating interacting particles fields.
The discovery of this “radical connectivity” should be life changing for all but needs to connect with and embed into everyday experience to change behaviours that could transform our attitudes and relationship to the planet.
This funding is a wonderful opportunity to clarify ideas on this rhythmical connectivity and devise ways of embedding awareness into everyday experience through collaborative artwork. Exploring this choreographic pattern through techniques of “expanded drawing” incorporating moving image approaches and three-dimensional forms to be physically negotiated with content from workshop participants investigating a personal experience of “the rhythmic.”
It would fund further research, devising and delivering workshops with a range of stakeholders leading to the collaborative production of a new artwork installations encouraging and exploring this new inclusivity.
Highlighting past and present innovative research in the area the project will enable Darlington to become the focus for trans-disciplinary collaborative artwork attempting to embed in everyday experience the profound implications of particle physics research that teaches, we are all intimately connected with each other and all matter in the universe, and we should behave accordingly. This radical connectivity could be forcefully explored and embedded in our consciousness through collaborative art bringing together specialists and public, artists and scientists alike.
This area was at the heart of the industrial revolution with George Stevenson’s “locomotive number one” tested on the line through Darlington in 1825. The equally significant particle physics revolution sees Durham University intimately connected via a series of a prize-winning physicists: John David Barrow (1952-2020) scientist and playwright. Sir Arnold Wolfendale (1927- 2020) Professor of physics known for his ground-breaking detection of cosmic rays. Carlos Silvestri Frenk, astro-physicist with his work on galaxy formation and the hunt for dark matter.
The UK’s deep underground Science facility at Boulby located in one of the deepest mines in the UK is only 39 miles away towards the coast from Darlington where my physicist is conducting subterranean dark matter experiments.
“The Sketchbook and the Collider,” my collaboration with Professor Kostas Nikolopoulos from the particle physics group at the University of Birmingham evolved from my residency in 2018. Involving the search for equivalents between the language of drawing and the interaction of fundamental particles. The residency culminated in an exhibition in the Rotunda Gallery, followed by another at the Library of Birmingham in 2019. Fine art and particle physics are both concerned with “making the invisible visible.” Scientific developments saw the “everyday” dissolve into sub-atomic interactions only accessible by examining traces in a detector. Mirrored by artists revealing ideas through marks made, materials manipulated, taking the same journey from hidden to something revealed.
Comparison of equipment from each discipline, the sketchbook, and the particle collider, both are arenas where elements are brought together, sometimes violently, that create and examine the traces of hidden interactions. The mechanics of drawing exposed in the same way that experiments reveal particles. I have delivered 44 workshops and 18 exhibitions. At the Forum Exposition Bonlieu in Annecy, France in 2022, “Reality is not what it seems,” attracted 1000 visitors during its three-week run. The project has exceeded 7000 participants with on-line figures beyond 25,000. Following this I spoke at the International Particle Physics Outreach Group 25th annual conference at CERN in Geneva. Supporting the project are educational workshops developing trans-disciplinary links between art and science. Primary and secondary schools, community groups and family sessions have been delivered encouraging a “creative curiosity.” The high walls at Studio-KIND, “Media, Matter and Energy,” 2021, enabled a massive increase in scale responding to the massive detectors and encouraging an active viewer, moving backwards and forwards between intricate detail and overall compositions, joining the particle “choreography”. The long walls at the Beacon Museum, “Point to Line to Particle,”2022, inspired drawings referencing linear accelerators with the feature drawing 17m long! Funding from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and a John Feeney Charitable Trust Fellowship both in 2023/24, enabled developments with three-dimensional form culminating in “Rhythmical: the particles, the cave, the brain and the body” at The Hive Gallery at the Ruskin Mill Trust, 2024.
Masters of Arts, Royal College of Art, 1988.
2023/24
Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grantee. In support of Lee Krasner’s mission to advance the work of exceptional artists facing financial issues. £20,000.
John Feeney Charitable Trust Fellowship. £5000.
2022
Lottery funded Arts Council England Award for “Point to Line to Particle,” The Beacon Museum, Cumbria. £6000.
2020
Lottery funded Arts Council England Award for lost income during lockdown. £2500
2019
Lottery funded Arts Council England Award for ‘Collision Event,” Library of Birmingham. £10,101
2017
Grant for the Arts. Arts Council England Award, for an “In-Public” community engagement project at mac Birmingham, event, publication and exhibition. £10,300.
New Art West Midlands: Research bursary. Grant to research alternative delivery models for my community arts group “In-Public”. £500.
I co-founded the community arts group “In-Public” with Sarah Fortes Mayer in 2015. We ran the Arts Council funded project, “Age-Yard-Shift,” working with five primary schools and culminating in an exhibition, publication and series of workshops at Mac Birmingham in 2017. We completed a project with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Mencap in 2018 and participated in the “Meet me at Live Age” project in Staffordshire organised by the Young Vic Theatre, Keele University and Age UK in 2019.
Integral to the current “The Sketchbook and the Collider” project are educational workshops developing trans-disciplinary links for Primary and secondary schools, community groups, family sessions. I have delivered over 40 workshops and 18 exhibition/events. At the Forum Exposition Bonlieu in Annecy, France in October 2022, “Reality is not what it seems,” attracted almost 1000 visitors during its three-week run and we estimate the exhibitions, and associated events have exceeded 6500 visitors-participants with the on-line figure beyond 25,000. Following the exhibition in France I was invited to talk at the International Particle Physics Outreach Group 25th annual conference at CERN in Geneva where the audience were fascinated by the embedding of complex scientific concepts within rhythmical mark-making activity.
2022
Laboratoire d’ Annecy de Physique des Particules, LAPP Annecy, France.
2018
University of Birmingham/ Research and Cultural Collections.
2025
Interalia Magazine, article featured in online magazine, focusing on art-science linked projects. “The Sketchbook and the Collider,” March issue, Matter and Time. Editor Richard Bright.
2022
A History Through Objects, innovation and research at University of Birmingham. Exhibition and catalogue.
2021
His Dark Materials, article published in Printmaking Today written by Sarah Bodman, Senior Research Fellow, UWE.
The Sketchbook and the Collider, article published in The Blue Notebook journal for artist’s books. Vol 13 No 2, by Sarah Bodman, Senior Research Fellow for Artists’ Books, UWE.
2020
Catalyst, Science Communication organisation at Michigan State University, USA. (On-line exhibition.)
2017
Five artists from Birmingham you should know, on-line review by Culture Trip.
2016
A-N top 10 artist’s books of the year, “One thing after another,” hand-drawn artist book. A-N (artist newsletter) online platform.
One to watch, featured in State magazine, November issue.
2015
In the studio with Ian Andrews, article by Dr Megan Wakefield, New Art West Midlands.
Emotional Art Selected for Jerwood Drawing Prize, article in the Birmingham Observer.
2013
15 Methods: 20 Questions, interview, publication and presentation at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Q-Art/ Higher Education Academy.
2012
Ian Andrews: Rummage out, review by Will Davie, Aesthetica magazine.
Stryx Gallery, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham.
2025
Artist in Residence and mid-career mentor at Stryx Gallery, Birmingham culminating in solo exhibition.
2023-24
Artist in Residence at the Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine, (SMQB) University of Birmingham. Embedded within a research team led by Professor Clare Anderson looking into the disruption of neuronal networks.
2022
The Shared Spaces Arts Festival, a week-long performative drawing residency working with the entire year eight cohort at Warwick School in association with physicist Giovanni Rogers.
2021
Micro collision event experiments, virtual residency during lockdown at Smallhousegallerygalleryuk, with artist /curator Eldi Dundee. Dolls-house Galleries, London.
2020
Artist in Residence: making, experimenting and exhibiting new work at Stryx, Artist led space, gallery and studios, Birmingham.
2018
Artist in Residence, Particle Physics Department, University of Birmingham/ Research and Cultural Collections, working with Professor Kostas Nikolopoulos from the particle physics group and the LHC at CERN, Geneva.
The Sound of Drawing, part of the group residency We don’t talk any more, performances on non-verbal communication at Stryx, Birmingham. (Curator Dan Auluk)
2017
Soup IV – Slow Cooker, Artist Residency & Tour, two-month residency at Stryx, Birmingham. Tour -The Asylum Art Gallery, Wolverhampton. Meter room, Coventry. Direct art action, Walsall. Artists’ Workhouse, Studley.
Email: ianandrewsfineart@yahoo.co.uk
Address: 10 Haunchwood Drive, Birmingham, West Midlands, B76 1JR, GB
Local Authority: West Midlands
