Jerwood Drawing Prize 2008
Jerwood Space, London
AFTER long being out of fashion, drawing is once again being seen as an art form in its own right, helped in part by the annual Jerwood Drawing Prize, which awards a handsome £6,000 as first prize and £3,000 for the runner-up.
Part of the reappraisal of drawing has seen it break away from its academic, dowdy image into an art form that is both adventurous and aware. This is made evident in this selection of 63 works from the 2,537 entries submitted. Wisely, the judges did not limit themselves to a single work by an artist but show up to three, so giving each more of a voice in establishing their approach.
After the avant garde direction of previous years – which might have included a step ladder or a tabletop – the selectors for this exhibition have adopted a slightly more conservative outlook than previous years, although there is the almost obligatory photograph demonstrating that drawing can be anything the artist says it is, this fulfilling Andy Warhol’s cynical claim that art is what you can get away with.
The photograph by Julie Masterton documents two figures Drawing in Space. It pushes the concept of drawing to its outer limits, although videos are also shown that further question any conventional understanding of the medium. One, by Neville Gabie, shows a felt-tipped drawing being made on the window of the Trans Siberian express as it speeds through the landscape.
What is evident is that traditional drawing – making marks on a flat surface with pencil, charcoal, crayon or watercolour – can take many forms and deal with a variety of themes, from whimsy, surrealism, emotion and politics. Warren Baldwin was awarded the first prize for his highly conventional highly detailed pencil and charcoal study of a woman sitting in a chair that captures the character of the sitter.
A more political approach is adopted by Darren Coffield, who confesses to being preoccupied with wars that rage relentlessly across the word. His drawing, Dear John, is partly a response to September 11. Arranged in an unlikely composition, two men on a stepladder seem to be directing an aeroplane into a skyscraper. The chilling image, at once innocent and alarming, is depicted in a comic-book style that reinforces the awfulness of the event to which it refers. Coffield’s drawing is effective as both metaphor and description.
Aspects of the darker side of life are evoked in the miniature pencil drawings of Tobias Tescher (the runner-up). These, he says, touch on the enigmatic communicative level that lies beneath the surface of objects, the intense, meticulous works have a Grand Guignol quality that pull you into the image.
Other works are equally graphic in combining medium and subject. One of the red watercolours by Kate Walters, the semi abstract image of a mother with arms crossed holding what looks like a baby uses intense colour which drips across the page. What is so alarming is that the embrace is more suffocating than loving describing an emotional, fraught relationship.
Protest, hinted at by Walters, is more blatantly expressed in Sarah Silverwood’s Fuck Christmas, an architectural study carried out on the cover of the book on Nijinsky. The drawing is based on a redundant pub seen in the Forest of Dean that bore the graffiti “Fuck Christmas”. The expression of anger and frustration seems perfectly at home in this engaging exhibition.
Emmanuel Cooper
Jerwood Drawing Prize continues until October 26 before travelling to Summerfield Gallery Cheltenham, Winchester Discovery Centre and Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery
