Once deeply rooted in pictorial representation, drawing today is enjoying fresh perspectives that have radically redefined its form and application.

Historically, drawing and narrative have been successful partners but it is becoming increasingly apparent that in the contemporary art climate, 'narrative' has been largely ignored by artists in favour of conceptual modes of expression and delivery.

Embracing novel interpretations an ongoing exhibition, 'Drawn from life', at London's Green Cardamom Gallery, focuses on the nature and value of drawing across a broad range of contemporary art activity.

Spread over a year, 'Drawn from life' has been composed as a trilogy of exhibitions that explore the drawing practice through the art of twenty contemporary artists from Asia, Middle East and Europe. Working in diverse visual languages, they have presented works that access nature, three-dimensional forms, design, science and technology as viable means of expression.

Challenging the usual aesthetic and functional associations of the medium, the artists have created a vast body of art that includes installations in paper, plastic and light as well as regular two-dimensional renditions variously inspired by the South Asian miniature, Islamic geometric design and colonial architecture.

Segmented into three independent shows, the first exhibition in the trilogy titled 'Drawing process', held in June '08, concentrated on methodology. Examining the opposing role of strategy and instinct in drawing, it was based on the work of twelve artists from Pakistan, India, Iran, Germany and Sri Lanka. The two categories distinguished between those artists who relinquish control and rely on probability and intuition to guide their drawing, and those who draw with deliberation and forethought.

Armed with just a felt tip pen Mohammed Ali Talpur indulges in a desire to observe and trace the flight path of birds, as seen from the rooftop of his studio in Lahore. His emerging abstracted lines articulate an 'art without content'. Similarly Beate Terfloth's minimal tree bark outlines on white paper also attempt to capture the ephemeral and the elusive. Premeditated art on the other hand is engineered to create specific portrayals.

Afsoon's photo etching on matchbox art works reframe photographic imagery of the early 1900's but it is her wry mix and juxtaposition of the profound with the humorous, the romantic with the prosaic that engages the viewer at first sight.

How is it that the process of drawing is able to pull together fragments of space, time and memory? The second exhibition in the trilogy 'Drawing space', running from July to September, taps on memory as a resource for accessing the intangible while the material and the concrete is drawn from the presence of physical objects. Memory as a drawing source needs and uses mental and physical mapping processes as part of its make-up.

Linear constructions of patterns and planar shapes on graph paper by Sehar Shah chart significant aspects of her life. Composed as an amalgam of reminiscences, they speak of her architectural background, childhood memories, her Islamic heritage and issues of identity encountered in New York. However, to the uninitiated they appear as an interesting patchwork of organic and geometric shapes to which any number of meanings can be attributed.

Another artwork 'Scapes and shapes' by Muhanned Cader also capitalises on the fragment impact. According to Bernice Rose (Allegories of Modernism, 1992) “In current practice the fragment is itself a mode...Dual readings are a continual theme, along with...the power of language, the sign, and allegory in unexpected places.” Painting Scottish landscapes Cader, originally from Sri Lanka, removes all traces of Celtic reference from his drawings. By doing so he is able to allude to or access his native home in his minds eye.

For artists who forego the manual for the digital in drawing practice, one is left wondering why, in the face of 21st century technology, we still draw. With technical manipulation the possibilities for reinvention, interdisciplinary fusion and hybridisation are limitless and some artists in the Green Cardamom show attempt to further the scope of basic drawing with some very imaginative digital inputs.

Exploring the relationship between the public and the private through drawing, Nazgol Ansarinia has played between the lines. Her decorative drawings of traditional Islamic/ Persian motifs and patterns are animated with humorous tongue in cheek narratives. Tiny figures in varied daily motions of eating, travelling and talking woven within her intricate sequential drawings alter the strict pattern image from a design to a storyboard.

The 'Ishara' series of digital prints on archival paper by Elizabeth and Ifthikar Dadi defined as 'quasi scientific specimens' are even more technology reliant. They came across as distant deconstructions of native architectural facades, fading emblems, motifs, bits of painted signage, vernacular scripts and trivia that clutter everyday existence in post-colonial mega cities. Among the few polychrome artworks in an otherwise monocolour show, it was the attractive chromatics that first draw in the viewer, engagement with contents and technique followed later.

Line may be the single most important element in drawing because it defines it as a drawing, but the second most important element is space and the shapes created by them. The works in this exhibition push boundaries of ordinary drawing with large papier-mache sculptures and collages such as Sojwal Samant's tower blocks and Hamra Abbas's paper plate installations where small houses pop out at every angle. These exercises develop ones facility at perceiving objects as physical shapes rather than as verbal descriptions. It is the implied context of the white or negative spaces that gives meaning to the art in question.

Exhibitions of Pakistani art abroad are also interesting case studies of the varied levels at which the art is internalised. The cultural climate of a region has a strong role to play in determining the reception of the art on view. Dwelling on notions of space and attempting to locate the intangible, Muhammed Zeeshan showing at Green Cardamom, redraws scenes from the Kama Sutra using only the fine hair on the body to indicate his forms.

A miniature artist by training, his experimental stance conforms to the premise of 'Drawing space', it-kowtows the mood of contemporaniety in miniature art and his sensitive rendering of an erotic theme is accepted accordingly by viewers abroad. However, the subject and treatment of the same works elicits an entirely different response from the average viewer here where gender explicitness is taboo.

Often differences in perception alter the viewing experience. But then multiple readings enlarge the scope of the art opening new debates on the definition of the personal and the public as well as the relationship between the artist, his art, and the viewing public.

Collectively, the exhibition represents a very broad range of new drawing expressions. From academic considerations, to the very personal enjoyment of a drawing notebook, and from expressive, gesture drawings to precisely accurate CAD drawings, it's all here.

As a show 'Drawing from life' thrives on the individual perspectives of its artists and among the amazing multiplicity of views and portrayals coming forth it, surprisingly, still manages to cohere to its premise. As for the viewer, the show demands an active process of reflection on the role of drawing in contemporary art practice.

Drawing Process (June 11 - July 12) Afsoon, Hamra Abbas, Nazgol Ansarinia, Muhanned Cader, Rohini Devasher, Gonkar Gyatso, Ayaz Jokhio, Noa Lidor, Rehana Mangi, Anwar Jalal Shemza, Mohammad Ali Talpur, Beate Terfloth, Muhammad Zeeshan

Drawing Space (July 24 - September 27) Hamra Abbas, Nazgol Ansarinia, Muhanned Cader, Iftikhar Dadi & Elizabeth Dadi, Noa Lidor, Jess MacNeil Sojwal Samant, Seher Shah and Zarina

1) Noa Lidor, Getting on with gardening, 2005; 2) Muhanned Cader, Untitled, 2008; 3) Joss MacNeil, The shape of between, 2006; 4) Rehana Mangi, Untitled, 2007; 5) Seher Shah, Crossing the Rubicon Cap, 2007; 6) Nazgol Ansarinia, Untitled I (detail), Patterns Series, 2007; 7) Iftikhar &Elizabeth Dadi, Ishara, 2008