Sam Messenger

Documenting mark-making is Sam Messenger’s primary activity. In his pen and ink drawings he methodically explores combinations of simple geometrical shapes repeated with almost mechanical persistence.

The use of mechanical repetition, paradoxically, also serves to emphasize or exploit errors and inaccuracies that are unavoidable when drawing by hand. These inaccuracies might include the wobble in a line, an uneven surface or inconsistent spacing. In so far as they are constant, these inaccuracies become unnoticeable, accepted as the inevitable outcome of a direct relationship between the artist’s hand and the surface of the paper.

Many of Messenger’s drawings begin with a series of rules and conditions the artist imposes upon himself in order to fulfill the project. The rules cannot change half way through in order to repeat a past result or produce a more aesthetically pleasing outcome. These initial decisions, therefore, determine how the drawing will progress, yet they can never predict what the finished work will look like. The result can never be accurately predicted, only hypothesized. Such a deceptively straight forward approach yields a series of drawings with great delicacy and sophistication that directly relate to one another, but can never repeat themselves.

Born in 1980 in London, lives and works in the London, UK

Education
2003-2005: MA, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2001-2003: BA, Camberwell College of Art, London, UK

Selected Group Exhibitions
2008: ‘You Silently (Two)’, Courtauld Library, London — ‘Blink, Cut + Repeat’, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London
2007: ‘Paper-thin worlds’, Man&Eve, London — Royal Academy of Arts, London — Art Chicago, Chicago — Art London, London — ‘Year_07 Art Projects’, London — ‘Aqua Wynwood art fair’, Miami
2006: Davidson Contemporary, New York — Royal Academy of Arts, London — The Gallery, Dorset — Vitsoe, London — Mall Galleries, London — Bankside Gallery, London — Rennie Mackintosh Gallery, Glasgow
2005: Pittville Gallery, Cheltenham — Jerwood Space, London — Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art, London — Gulbenkian Galleries, Royal College of Art, London
2004: The Fitting Shop, London — 291 Gallery, London — Circus Gallery, London — Gulbenkian Galleries, Royal College of Art, London — Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art, London — Yard Gallery, London
2003: Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art, London — Gulbenkian Galleries, Royal College of Art, London — Camberwell College of Arts, London
2002: The Ritzy, London — Arts & Ecology Pavilion, London

Prizes and Awards
Royal College of Art, Parallel Prize, 2005