Visual Arts

Postcards between Friends, an exhibition of extraordinary postcards. They’re real postcards, complete with stamps, postmarks, and wear and tear, but they’re special in three ways. First, they are all hand-drawn. Second, every postcard is a collaboration between at least two people. And third, every postcard has been through the mail at least twice.

The process works like this. One artist starts a drawing and, without adding any verbal instructions or commentary, mails it to another. The second artist finds the postcard in her mailbox, completes the drawing, and mails it back to the sender. The results are surprising because each collaborative postcard is a small work of art that neither of its makers could have predicted.

Making drawings together in this way is exciting. It’s a fun new way to experience (the by now ‘retro’) magic of sending and receiving personal mail. Its a fresh new way to relate to classmates and friends. Each postcard records a response to an ‘artistic dare’ as well as a sustained process characterized by reciprocal generosity and trust.

Friends share ideas and techniques with friends through making postcards together. I might always draw one way, in one style, using a familiar set of techniques; and so your drawing is a stranger in my art world. Do I welcome your approach to my initial idea? Does your way somehow work with mine? Why does or doesn’t it work? Practice leads to analysis and this all takes time, because finding the best solutions to visual problems will not be an instant thing. Solving creative problems together involves thought, experimentation, imagination, and care.

The Postcards between Friends exhibition showcases the collaborative postcards made by the four class groups of Lingnan University students who participated in drawing courses offered by the Visual Studies Department between 2012 and 2014. It places these works alongside those that originally inspired them – works of their teacher, Carol Archer, in collaboration with five Australian artist-friends: Anna Couani, Loene Furler, Kit Kelen, Virginia Shepherd and Sue Rawlinson.