DRAWING FOR SURVIVAL
Paul Ryan
1 October 2005 - 5
February 2006
Imperial War Museum, London
New work by Paul Ryan is to be displayed in the Imperial War Museum London’s art exhibition, Captive,
from 1 October 2005. Drawing for Survival was commissioned by
the Museum to bring a contemporary perspective to the exhibits by official war
artists and Far East prisoners of war.
On a two week visit
funded by the Imperial War Museum in May and June 2005, Paul Ryan visited
sites in Thailand where the experiences of Far East prisoners of war are
commemorated in museums and by memorials and cemeteries.
He followed the path of the now defunct Burma-Siam railway, built at the
cost of so many lives in 1943, and drew the Hammer and Tap Cutting as Jack
Chalker and Ronald Searle did over 60 years ago.
In Japan he visited the peace museums at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as well
as Osaka, which was carpet-bombed by conventional weapons.
Paul Ryan works in pencil, pen and ink
and watercolour, using a small notebook in which he records visual observations
and written comments. The
notebook drawings are both an end in themselves and the source for larger
images, often using a different system of marks or materials.
From approximately 140 drawings he made in Thailand and Japan he has
developed some into larger works, including a wall drawing.
The pages of his notebook have been scanned and are shown on a small
screen together with the original notebooks.
Sixty other notebooks
have been displayed to further explore drawing as a means of survival.
Paul Ryan was born in
Leicester in 1968. He lives and
works in London. www.paulryan.co.uk
Drawing for Survival Was curated by Angela Weight.
Captive highlights
the experiences of prisoners of war from the fall of Singapore in February 1942
until the end of the war through the Museum’s collection of drawings and
paintings by both official and unofficial war artists. The exhibition runs until
5 February 2006.