In a guest article, artist Lisa Gornick discusses her new live drawing show Drawing on The Bottle – a short guide to ethanol, premiering on the 7th and 8th June at 9pm at The Camden Roar, a festival in its 30th year that is curated and chosen by the audience and citizens assembly of the Camden People’s Theatre.
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This show is about my drinking life which thankfully is over. It’s a bit of a tragedy that I fell into but I want to explore how it happened using pathos, some comedy all accompanied by real time projected drawing.
I hope through depicting my personal story, that other people can see their own story in it around drinking or not drinking or somewhere in between. Drinking is still pretty ubiquitous in the UK. Press headlines differ daily on the numbers that use it in an extremely toxic way. It used to be that younger people were avoiding it but then, I read that the UK still has the highest number of children drinkers. That’s so sad.
Also sad, is the rising number of older women, like me, who got stuck, at home with a bottle. Hiding, drinking and hiding.
I’ve been making live drawing shows for the last. 20 years. I stalled whilst I got diverted into depression and then booze and then more depression because of the booze.
However, climbing back out, this new live drawing show is emerging with me. The live drawing show is a combination of filmmaking, performing and drawing. I am a hybrid artist so this way of making work excites me on a visceral, emotional and an intellectual level.
Its real time projected drawing which accompanies me telling tales, memories, insights of my time as a person who drank increasingly to excess in the borough of Camden.
A live drawing show feels like an intimate piece of DIY cinema. I’m sitting at a desk with an ink pen and paints as I speak into a microphone, music plays and I immerse myself in drawing as I tell anecdotes, explore ideas in the show.
I have been doing live drawing shows for about 17 years. They combine all my artistic practices of drawing, performing and filmmaking. They are easy to tour and are quite a direct, audience engagement theatre.
The show follows my journey with alcohol and my desire to say farewell to it. I explore how it became so prevalent in my life. It’s a personal story but tales of addiction are often deeply universal too.
This show is probably the most personal I’ve ever done. I’m looking forward to the journey of this live drawing show with the audience that it finds. They are the final piece to build this show along with me. Feel free to connect with me on instagram, @lisagornick, or you can drop me a line on info@lisagornick.com
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Drawing on the Bottle is part of the Camden Roar, and will be performed at the Camden People’s Theatre from Friday 7th June – Saturday 8th June.
Tickets can be found at cptheatre.co.uk/whatson/Drawing-on-the-Bottle and the full Camden Roar Festival programme can be found at cptheatre.co.uk/festivals/camden-roar