Point Finale
Installation and wall drawings with the assistance of RMIT students, The Drawing Space, RMIT University, October – December, 2008
Point finale is the full stop in French punctuation, as in English, it is visually described by a dot. It is the final stop to a passage of text.
The images that are scattered throughout the stairwell of the Drawing Space in Building 49 at RMIT are comprised of dots, dots of domestic dust and pastel dust swept from the floors of my studios, these drawings are transient, they will wash easily off the walls.
In the mid 1980s when I began doing images of reflective duality – like a Narcissus or a Swan – I developed the habit of tracing the original freehand drawing and transferring it in reverse to a secondary drawing. The process I used called spolvero, was commonplace amongst fresco and mural painters who punctured holes along the outlines of a cartoon drawing in order to powder silhouettes and details onto a section of wall. I have memories from school of my geography teacher using this process with chalk dust to transfer complex maps of the world to the blackboard.
G. Bradbeer