left: Margaret Roberts, Waiting (Katarzyna Kobro, Spatial Compositions #3 + #4 1928-9), 2017 graphite on tissue, folded  25 x 35 cm, unfolded 85 x 135 cm
right: Margaret Roberts, Waiting (Katarzyna Kobro, Spatial Compositions #5 + #6 1929-31), 2017 graphite on tissue, folded  25 x 35 cm, unfolded 85 x 135 cm

The Waiting drawings will be shown in the Drawing Collective exhibition at Galerie Olivier Nouvellet in Paris, opening 6pm Tuesday 21 March 2017.

Catalogue of 2017 Paris Drawing Collective exhibition

The two Waiting drawings document Katarzyna Kobro's Spatial Compositions #3,4, 5,and 6, each of which was made around 1930. Each drawing is the life-sized pattern for two of these Spatial Compositions, folded to suit the smaller space of the archive. They are life-size to keep faith with the importance Katarzyna Kobro placed on the spatial nature of her work. This importance is seen in the equal relationship she constructed between her work and its location, which she described in 1929 as: Sculpture is a part of the space in which it is located. . .Sculpture enters space and space enters the sculpture (1)

The Waiting drawings are also made in this way to reassert the value of actual space now, several decades later, when the tragic consequences of the ongoing disregard for the spatial environment are more commonly known. They aim to do this by documenting the sculptures at their first stage, with their 'life' still in front of them. They are part of a wider body of reconstructions that emphasise the importance spatial artists give to actual space, by presenting their work as incomplete—as it seems more difficult to overlook the actual space in which something is located if we are still waiting for it to fully arrive.

This wider body of work includes multiple incomplete reconstructions of Katarzyna Kobro's Spatial Composition 2 and of Francesco Borromini's 17C churches, and others.

The second 2017 Drawing Collective exhibition opened at ArticulateUpstairs in Sydney, on Thursday 13 April 2017. It includes the next 2 Waiting drawings–of Katarzyna Kobro's Spatial Compositions #1,2,7 and 8.

Catalogue of 2017 Sydney Drawing Collective exhibition

Photo below by Glenn Locklee