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Mary Yacoob
Selected Images
Fig. 1, 'Aeolean City', 48cm x 36cm, drawing on paper and digital print, 2023.jpg
A drawing made in response to conversations with architect Dr Julie Futcher, who specialises in the effects of tall buildings on micro-climates. The forms in my drawing are inspired by wind-flow diagrams by Futcher and other researchers. In my artwork, I imagine what would happen if the forces of extra-terrestrial winds were shaping the counters of the urban environment.
Fig 2, 'Mechanic Space 02', 50cm x 40 cm, ink on paper, 2023
A drawing inspired by diagrams of spaceships and space infrastructure. The work imagines a possible future in which giant, interlocking machines of mysterious origin and purpose, are constructed from the debris that is increasingly populating space.
Fig. 3, 'Orbital City', 47cm x 34cm, cyanotype print, 2023
This drawing is made in response to UCL PhD student William Stewart who is a social scientist of outer space. My drawing imagines that, following a climate catastrophe, planet Earth, represented by the empty circular space in the middle, has been abandoned. A city has been constructed in orbit from recycled space junk.
Fig. 4, 'Diagram of Three Characters (Instinctive, Rational and Intuitive) after John Latham', 14.8 x 21cm, ink on paper, 2020
In March 2020, artists and researchers David Burrows, John Cussans and Dean Kenning and myself started the Diagram Research Group (DRG). We discuss aesthetic, philosophical, and semiotic aspects of diagrams. This drawing was made for our Delta Research Placement at Flat Time House, the studio home of the artist John Latham. My drawing diagrams Latham’s ideas about how the characters in the novel ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ by Dostoevsky engage with reality. Mitya is instinctive and spontaneous, Ivan is rational, and Alyosha is reflective and intuitive. My diagram shows the different levels of intensity by which we may experience all three modes of engagement.
Fig. 5, 'Schema 04', cyanotype print, 34 x 47 cm, 2019
Images inspired by engineering diagrams and geometry, shown at Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2019 and at a solo exhibition at Five Years Gallery. ‘Schema’ are light drawings that aim to push the boundaries of the industrially obsolete technical process of cyanotype print, invented in 1842 by the astronomer Sir John Herschel to reproduce diagrams. The works evoke the geometry of machine tools, astrolabes, circular and rotating tacho-discs, and gearboxes depicted in cross-section. The drawings explore how in creatively responding to a scientific image, something of the source’s presence and function may be retained in the intricacy, rhythm, and structure of the artworks.
Fig. 6, 'Draft 26', 56cm x 74cm, ink on paper, 2023
The ‘Draft’ series is inspired by diagrams sourced from textbooks about the hardware of sound technology. The rhythm, repetition and durational nature of mark-making refers to the production of sound. White ink on dark blue paper recalls the use of handmade ‘blueprints’, creating a bridge in time to a pre-digital age. This drawing has catalysed a collaboration with a PhD student from the Dept of Space & Climate Physics.
Fig. 7, 'Configuration 03', cyanotype, 52cm x 70cm, 2022.jpg
The ‘Configuration’ series is inspired by telescopic images of interstellar clouds, which are formed of the gas, plasma and dust that remain following the formation of a galaxy. When these clouds collapse under their own gravitational pull, new stars are formed. The drawings are also informed by star charts. I am intrigued by how the immensity of space is schematised, and how simple line and dot drawings are used to trace lines between stars to identify constellations.
Fig. 8, Silver mirror vinyl installation at Surgery Gallery, 2021
This installation took the form of silver vinyl decals inspired by diagrams of medical instruments from the Wellcome Collection. Silhouetted configurations were rendered in metalic vinyl, creating mysterious and kinetic abstractions, bringing to light the extraordinary variety of forms behind our medical history. The theme of the artwork was inspired by the name of the gallery, Surgery, which based on the building’s former use as a GP surgery.
Fig. 9, 'Marcello Mind Maze', 132 x 172 cm, 2019. Installation at the Hospital Club, London
This vinyl work is inspired by a splicing of two diagrams - a cross section of a human brain and an architectural plan of an ancient Roman amphitheatre. By combining these two sources of information and visual languages, the work explores the similarities between the pathways, systems, circuitous routes within bodily and architectural systems, as well as the similar diagrammatic visual abstractions that are used to represent these functions. The reflective gold vinyl absorbed the reflections of passers by, drawing them into the psychological space of the drawing.
Fig. 10, 'Constructor', transparent blue vinyl on glass doors, each pane 89 x 236 cm, 2019
This site-specific vinyl artwork was commissioned for Swiss Cottage Library by curatorial group Passengers and Camden Council. The design is inspired by the influence of technology and the ‘machine aesthetic’ in Modernist architecture. This artwork was inspired by the architectural plans of the nearby Alexandra Road estate, designed by Neave Brown, whose works were an influential instance of the Modernist approach in the design and planning of social housing projects in the 1960s.
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