Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper) is at London's Institute of Contempary Arts, from 19th Jun to 8th September 2013.

Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper) explores how artists since the 1940s to the present day have used drawing to address ideas critical and current to their time, ranging from the politics of gender and sexuality to feminist issues, war, censorship and race. Stretching from fashion to erotica, the works can all be viewed as being in some way transgressive, employing traditional and commercial drawing techniques to challenge specific social, political or stylistic conventions.

The exhibition brings together the work of eight artists: Judith Bernstein, Tom of Finland, George Grosz, Margaret Harrison, Mike Kuchar, Cary Kwok, Antonio Lopez and Marlene McCarty.

Curated by Sarah McCrory, the exhibition draws on the way artists turned to the commercial realms of comics, fashion and illustration to revitalise drawing within the visual arts - many of the works in Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper) were originally produced for a commercial context. One common aspect of these varied practices is a high level of technical skill - these are artists who often confounded critics of their subject matter owing to their deft and high skilled technical abilities. Choosing to step outside the boundaries of social acceptability, the works in the exhibition comprise modest proposals and trenchant political gestures.

Entrance to the exhibition is free.

Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall
London SW1Y 5AH

Image: Tom of Finland, Untitled, 1963.
Graphite on paper
(c) 1963 Tom of Finland Foundation