Drawing – both her own and other people’s – is a key part of Kovats’ practice. For her exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery she has made a new book, 'Drawing Water'. Believing that drawing is a mechanism for exploration as much as a tool for representation, Kovats brings together in the book drawings by map-makers, writers, shipbuilders, whalers, soldiers, sailors, artists, archaeologists, cartographers, scientists, uranographers, engineers and dreamers – a diverse selection united by the sense that in making the drawing they were looking for something. A selection of Kovats’ own drawing and writing anchors the book which attempts to construct, in the artist’s words, ‘a portolan, a chart drawn at sea to guide a sailor from one safe harbour to the next’.