You may have seen architect Pete Bossley’s book – One Year Drawn, a visual diary of a year spent travelling the world in his early 30s. It was a tumultuous, life-changing journey following the end of his first marriage. The trip took in significant architectural sites around the world, all of it documented in 10 notebooks filled with sketches of people, places and moments. 

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He returned to New Zealand, went back into practice with Pip Cheshire and Mal Bartleet, and eventually out his own – but the sketching continued. “I found that the sketches became more than a way of recording the details of the world,” he wrote in the book, published last year. “They began to search for something more. They began to suggest an essence rather than the detail of the subject – to try to discover different and even new ways of expressing such an essence. It is a search that has continued for more than 30 years.”

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The book spawned another project, the exhibition 40 Years Drawn at Objectspace from August 1, which features a selection of Bossley’s 40 years of sketches, plus a number of notebooks to pore over. In a world overwhelmed by digital images, it’s a lovely reminder of the power of something hand-drawn. 

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Objectspace
13 Rose Road, Ponsonby, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
objectspace.org.nz

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