The Drawing Exchange

NAS Gallery presents The Drawing Exchange. The Drawing Exchange(TDE) fosters artistic exchange between artists and art institutions, through an artist-led program focusing on innovative drawing practices. TDE 2022 is the third iteration of an ongoing collaboration between Adelaide Central School of Art and NAS. In 2022, Maitland Regional Art Gallery (NSW) joins the program, expanding the national reach of the Drawing Exchange. The TDE 2022 theme is Site. The nine selected artists respond to the site of their home institution and potentially the site(s) of the other participating institutions (through dialogue, images, site/​floor plans etc) or extend these ideas beyond the locality and history of the institution to engage with broader concepts of site. 

TDE 2022 brings together a diverse group of visual artists at different career stages, supporting them to make new work in a collaborative context within each venue, and sharing these developments across the three Drawing Exchange locations. This is achieved through a residency style program in which artists work on site at their home institution making new work in an intensive and communal way for a period of 1 – 2 weeks. The process of exchange is developed during these periods of working together on site, discussions between the artists at the partner venues, and engagement with students and the broader public, culminating in an exhibition at each venue. The residency phase and exhibitions at the three locations overlap consecutively, beginning with NAS (drawing gallery), followed by MRAG (stairwell spaces) and ACSA (gallery). The three venues will be open to visitors during the residency phase of the project as well as the exhibition period. Artist talks will focus on the theme of ​‘site’ and how drawing can be driven by process and exchange without predetermined outcomes, contributing to a deeper understanding of the value of artistic process by giving audiences an ​‘inside view’.