Exercises in Seeing

Inspired by Augustas Serapina‘s exhibition Physical Culture: Porto Edition, the Galeria Municipal do Porto and the Soares dos Reis National Museum present Exercises in Seeing, a drawing workshop led by Joana Padilha. This workshop invites the public to discover new ways of looking at, interpreting and experiencing sculpture, taking participants on a journey between the two institutions.

Over the course of four hours, participants will engage in a series of exercises designed to stimulate attention, memory, perception and gesture. These exercises draw on historical methods of artistic training and place them in dialogue with contemporary artistic practice.

For centuries, drawing was an essential part of an artist’s education, with artists learning by observing sculptures, plaster casts, anatomical fragments and the human body. In Physical Culture: Porto Edition, Augustas Serapinas revisits these traditional learning tools and relates them to contemporary cultures of physical training, performance, and image-making. The workshop builds on this concept, offering an experience accessible to participants with or without prior drawing experience. The focus is not on the final result, but on honing the ability to observe and perceive.

The workshop begins at the Galeria Municipal do Porto with a guided tour of the exhibition, followed by a short discussion about the connections between physical training and artistic training, repetition, learning, and the depiction of the body. Participants then undertake a series of drawing exercises focused on observing fragments of the installation, experimenting with different materials and techniques, drawing from memory and interpreting the exhibition space as an inhabited, constantly changing place.

In the second part of the workshop, the group will walk to the Soares dos Reis National Museum, establishing a physical and conceptual connection between the two institutions. Using a selection of sculptures from the museum’s collection as inspiration, participants will complete a series of drawing exercises focusing on structure, contour, detail, light and shadow, and how to represent the sculpture as a whole. This methodology views drawing as a process of discovery that activates different modes of attention and perception, fostering sensitive engagement with the displayed works.