Globe Tracing IV

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Whitehall

Layla Curtis made this drawing by wrapping large pieces of tracing paper around a model globe and tracing only the existing text, omitting all the other marks, which delineated oceans, mountains, borders and other geographical features. By doing this, she allows the place names alone to represent landmass, distorting our preconceptions of the world.

In her work, Curtis subverts universally understood and trusted sources of information, such as the world map, by dissecting and distorting its contents. Her earlier work has included maps which she has dissected and collaged, placing geographical features and place names of one country on a map of another, thereby questioning not only our trust in the map as a source of information, but our individual place in the world.

Curtis is also interested in the mathematical problems of translating a three-dimensional entity such as the globe into a two-dimensional form and the distortion and biases this creates.

Layla Curtis studied Painting at the Edinburgh College of Art (1994−1998) and Sculpture at the Chelsea College of Art (1999−2000). She has since exhibited around the UK, Australia and Japan; with recent solo exhibitions in Newcastle (2015) and Leicester (2013). Her work is represented in several public and private collections, including Tate; the New Art Gallery, Walsall; and The World Bank, USA. Public commissions have included 'Heatscapes', a Great North Run Moving Image Commission, Newcastle (2014/15); 'Traceurs: to trace, to draw, to go fast', commissioned by Westminster City Council, London (2008); and United European Union 2002, commissioned by La Page, Paris, France (2002). Curtis has been the recipient of numerous awards, including Grants for the Arts by Arts Council England (2012, 2010) and the Woo Charitable Foundation Bursary (2002). She has also held several artist residencies, including at the Storey Gallery, Lancaster (2009/10); ‘Artists and Writers Programme, Antarctica’ jointly sponsored by the British Antarctic Survey and Arts Council England under the ACE's International Fellowship Programme (2005/6); and at the Akiyoshidai International Arts Village in the Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan (1999).

Places

Subjects

map (as Subject), text-based work

Materials & Techniques

tracing paper, ink, Ink drawing

Artist

Layla Curtis (1975 - )

Title

Globe Tracing IV

Date

2001

Medium

Ink on tracing paper

Dimensions

height: 91.00 cm, width: 65.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Rhodes + Mann, March 2002

Provenance

With Rhodes & Mann, London

GAC number

17657