Mid-November 2021. Fifty years ago the Tantra exhibition at the Hayward Gallery was due to close. I remember that its popularity kept the show open longer. However, back then, I'd seen enough. My head had been filled with ideas about exhibition-making as an immersive arts practice. Anniversaries are meant to commemorate self-contained events but I'm stuck somewhere between Tantra's opening and its postponed end-date. I was on a journey then and I'm still on that journey now, so it seems appropriate to start a blog that prolongs my sense of incompleteness. In November 1971 the distinctive red catalogue I bought at the Hayward became a permanent fixture in my studio at the Royal College of Art. A year later, the curator of the exhibition, Philip Rawson, joined the staff and became my tutor for the remainder of the course. Over several decades, as I went about establishing my career as an artist-curator, Philip continued to mentor my engagement with museum collections.
While I work on this blog I am borrowing a catalogue annotated by him in the year he started teaching me. It's on my work table now.
Tantra catalogue with three drawings
1) Cover detail. Philip S. Rawson (1971) Tantra, Hayward Gallery exhibition catalogue, London: Arts Council of Great Britain. Signed by the author and annotated by him throughout.
2) Auspicious shape (drawing by Chris Dorsett currently bookmarking catalogue pages 64-65). Rectangular sheet removed from an A5 sketchbook in June 2021. Pencil (verso red crayon) on 220gsm paper.
3) Auspicious shape (drawing by Chris Dorsett currently bookmarking catalogue pages 108-109). Triangular off-cut detached from folded drawing 6168.19 in May 2021. Pencil on 85gsm bioprima paper.
4) Untitled scrap (drawing by Chris Dorsett currently bookmarking catalogue pages 54-55). Trimming from folded drawing 6113.16, which was reduced in size for exhibition purposes in early 2020. Pencil (verso red crayon) on 85gsm bioprima paper.