Drawing continues to thrive, as shown at Coventry gallery

Jerwood Drawing Prize, Lanchester Gallery, Coventry University, Jordan Well, Coventry. On until March 31.

IT has always been assumed that the traditional skills of drawing disappeared when abstraction came to dominate art’s mainstream.

But if this was ever the case, nobody seems to have told the organisers of the Jerwood Drawing Prize. Over the years, they have been able to demonstrate in their biennial shows that drawing continues to thrive in this country in both its traditional forms and in ways that would have been inconceivable before the modern era.

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The point is made immediately in Liz Bailey’s arresting image of a bonsai tree. The technique is traditionally precise but the conception entirely modern. The image hovers in a void, a skeletal structure whose gnarled roots and branches define an otherwise empty space.

Less observational but more audaciously ambitious is Jessie Brennan’s five metre long drawing of a fantasy boat on the (pre-Olympic) River Lea. Her pencil technique is marginally less polished than in some of the show’s other super-crafted offerings, but the imaginative, tapestry-like telling of this riverside tale makes for a deserving prizewinner, albeit the second prize.

The selection panel must have had their reasons for choosing the winner of the £6000 first prize but conceptual sophistication and polished execution couldn’t have been among them. Juried shows often throw up anomalies. There is work here that should have been consigned to the studio bin, but that’s just a tiny minority. The majority are impressive both in their visual inventiveness and in the range of skills that has gone into their making.

The exhibition offers a rewarding experience for those who like to draw or simply look at drawings. But for the doubting traditionalist, this richly diverse touring show is likely to come as a complete revelation.

Peter McCarthy

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