CALUM STORRIE
February 2024
Postcard with black ink
88mm x138mm
Framed
 
One of a series of amended postcards where landscapes have been re-populated and reinterpreted.
Calum Storrie is an artist, writer and designer. He trained as an architect in Dundee (Scotland) and worked in London in the museum and exhibition field from 1986 to 2022, designing exhibitions for, among others, the Royal Academy, Wellcome Collection, the Museum of London, Wien Museum (Vienna), and the Kulturhistorisk Museum in Oslo.
 
Since then, his practice has shifted to drawing, which takes many forms. One strand comprises meticulously drawn fantasy architectural spaces. A second consists of free-form, short, fast sketches of musicians and improvisers in performance, often at Cafe Oto in Dalston, drawn without taking his pen off the paper and without looking down at his notebook as he draws. Pursuing his interest in sound and music, Calum has also made a number of graphic scores. He has no musical training and so has not created something with a definitive soundscape. In fact, he has no idea of how the music will sound. Individual sounds, duration, rhythm, tone and so on are for the players to decide, and the process is inherently collaborative. The first, Nine Day Score, a collaboration with the pianist Steve Beresford, was released by Cafe Oto on their digital label Takuroku in 2020. The second, Infected Ink, a collaboration with the musician Douglas Benford was released in 2021. A third, Multiples of Four, was interpreted by the Ligeti Quartet in 2022. Both the performance and the score can be seen on the Ligeti Quartet website. These graphic scores are an extension both of Calum's drawing practice and of his time spent listening to many kinds of music. 
 
The fourth strand consists of pen and ink drawings of human figures, often incorporating collages of found texts and images. Stark and graphic, but covered in detail and pattern, they combine features from Egyptian, Greek Cycladic, pagan and animalistic imagery. Faceless, they dance, run, stand, tumble and fall. Calum is reluctant to explain them, or to describe where they came from. He reads, walks, listens and looks widely, but as he says, he may be thinking about a particular artist while drawing, but it doesn’t translate directly into his imagery. 
Calum’s book The Delirious Museum was published by Bloomsbury in 2007, and in an updated and expanded Italian version by Johan & Levi Editore (Milan) in 2017.
In 2023 he was the subject of a documentary, Calum Storrie: Drawing etc, directed by Peter Bromley and produced by the 1968 Film Group. Shot over six months in and around Hackney, London, and Dundee, the film captures Calum walking, drawing, and collaborating with musicians and artists from different creative disciplines, from soundscapes, to music scores, and painting. 
 
www.vimeo.com/ondemand/calumstorriedrawingetc