For father and daughter David and Liza Dimbleby, curators of the major new Towner Eastbourne exhibition Drawing the Unspeakable (until April 27), their shared starting point was the language of drawing.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Greek Arts Registrar at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely
00:06this afternoon to speak to Liza Dimbleby and it's a really exciting thing happening in
00:11Eastbourne at the moment at Towner. You and your father David Dimbleby are putting together
00:16an exhibition, a major exhibition, which is new territory for you and new territory for
00:21your father too. Tell me how it came about.
00:25Well, it was the idea of Joe Hill, who is the director of Towner, and it came just because
00:30he knew that during lockdown we'd been exchanging drawings together, which made him think about
00:37drawing as a mode of communication and that he knew we both did it. It was something and
00:41he said, well, why don't you curate a show? Dad was about to retire as chairman. Why don't
00:46you curate a show with Liza and let's centre it around drawing and the Towner collection?
00:50And I thought, great. And I thought it would be like a weekend's work. And somehow this
00:54seed grew and set out all sorts of tendrils and we've ended up with this huge show of
01:00drawing.
01:01And I see Phil now, you're actually looking at it and it's there, realised.
01:05I know and we're both very excited by what has been gathered together and all these voices
01:11of the 90 artists speaking in this great polyphony or cacophony.
01:16Because you brought them together, that's the point.
01:21And also I think it's the range of drawings. We've got drawings here in the show from refugee
01:26drawings made by people in Paris of their trips on boats across the sea. And then we
01:34have, next to them we've got Louise Bourgeois, we've got Graham Sutherland, we've got all
01:43these kind of artists dead and alive. But the language is common because drawing is
01:49a very, very direct language. So it does translate across. And there are many ways and sometimes
01:55and also it doesn't clash. You don't think, oh, that's a simple drawing. Louise Bourgeois
02:00one is actually very similar language to the one that the refugees are using. So it's,
02:06it just shows the great expanse of language within drawing.
02:11And you had a lovely starting point, given that you were saying drawing is a shared language
02:15with your father and always has been. An alternative that you were saying to the political discourse,
02:21which is more usual at the table.
02:23Well, it's a way, when you're away from the table, and it's a way of going in deeper to
02:29things. And also because I think the thing about a visual language is that it often takes
02:34you off in places, directions you don't foresee and offers up surprises. So you just can start
02:40drawing and something you didn't really realise. And a drawing can show you something sometimes.
02:46It's a medium.
02:47Yeah. And you have to keep coming back, don't you? Even to this exhibition, you'll have
02:51to keep coming back. Because it will always offer something different according to your
02:55medium.
02:56I really believe that. But yeah, every time you look at something, you see a different
03:00thing. And seeing a lot of drawings like this in relation to each other, they all start
03:04to look slightly different. They speak to each other in different ways as well. And
03:09some of them are huge, some of them are tiny.
03:12So are you now starting to think, where can I do this next?
03:17Yeah, we were saying that, yes, we should have a drawing the unspeakable, two or three
03:23or four. I mean, it's endless. And we're very keen as well that people should come and
03:27that people should be inspired to draw more and that it's a language that everyone has
03:31just like words are and that people shouldn't be inhibited and think they can't draw
03:37because it's the first language we draw before we speak and write.
03:40Absolutely, yes. Some people...
03:43Before we form words and before we're contained by the grammars that we're born into and
03:48contained by the language we're born into, we have words, we have sticks in mud or sand
03:53or...
03:54Why not use it?
03:56Sounds a fabulous thing to have done. Congratulations on the exhibition. Looking forward to
03:59seeing it and lovely to speak to you.
04:03Well, I hope you'll come and enjoy.
04:05Absolutely. Thanks very much indeed.