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Jerwood Drawing Prize 2015 - The Open College of the Arts

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Jerwood Drawing Prize 2015

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The drawing you can see at the top this article has just been selected for this year’s Jerwood Drawing Prize​ and ​I’ll be running a study visit to see the show on Saturday 19 September. ​(​See below for details of the visit​). It was ​made ​using a technique outlined in the first section of Drawing One.
Towards the end of the first section of Drawing One students are asked to scale up a small drawing using a​ ​grid as a guide. I’ve been teaching on the course for a few years and while most students do this, it’s never done with much enthusiasm and I hardly ever see it used elsewhere on the course. It’s something that a lot of us remember from school, I think, and its value is often overlooked. Without it, though, I don’t think I’d have been able to make this piece.
Drawing scaled up versions of images has been at the centre of my practice for a few years now and I have struggled with lightboxes and projectors (digital and overhead) for different p​iece​s. The problem ​was that ​making work always​ required equipment, space, and a time commitment and consequently I wasn’t making as much work as I would have liked. When extolling the virtues of using the ​’grid’ ​method as a way of transferring an image in a report for a student I suddenly realised how useful it would be to me. I started using the technique and I became much more productive, almost instantly. You can see me using it in this OCA video. It’s a low-tech method that forces me to make visual judgements that are more subtle than tracing. The results are always obviously drawings ​which have little glitches and errors and so on that add to the texture of the work. In the drawing above you can see the left hand strut of the shelving was initially put in the wrong place (probably one square to the left of where it should have been). No matter, I erased it as best I could and continued.
The piece above is a sixteen panel drawing (​I used a six by six grid ​on each panel ​for the transfer) and each panel is 25cm x 25 cm. That makes the drawing a square metre. Because each panel was made separately a large task ​was broken ​down into sixteen smaller ones, allowing me to feel that I was achieving something each time a panel was completed. I didn’t return to completed panels and am happy that they don’t quite match up. The white grid you can see is formed by the thin borders of each drawing and it acts as an echo of the method I used to make the work.
The source image is a photograph I took of a Joseph Beuys sculpture called Wirtschaftswerte, ​(Economic Values in English​)​. Making the drawing took at least fifty hours to make​ and​ was a strange experience​.​ I began to notice and think about all sorts of details in the work that aren’t hidden, but aren’t exactly apparent either.
Join me on the 19 September at the Jerwood Space in London. and we can talk about it and all the other works on display in the exhibition.
To reserve your place email enquiries@oca.ac.uk
JERWOOD DRAWING PRIZE EXHIBITION DETAILS:
Jerwood Space, London (16 September – 25 October 2015)
Cheltenham Art Gallery (21 November 2015 – 31 January 2016)
Sidney Cooper Gallery, Canterbury (11 February – 9 April 2016)
Falmouth Art Gallery (23 April – 25 June 2016)
Admission Free at the Jerwood Space (And I suspect at all the others, but do check)
The press release does hint that other venues might be announced, but don’t count on it.
If you are interested in joining me on the nineteenth, I will be there from noon having coffee and/or lunch in the cafe, and we can start going round the show at 1pm. The gallery closes at 3pm.
 
Bryan Eccleshall, OCA Tutor and Assessor.


Posted by author: Bryan

13 thoughts on “Jerwood Drawing Prize 2015

  • Thanks for sharing Bryan and congratulations. It is a fantastic work. All your other small works are fantastic as well, very interesting to look at and fascinating to see a person committing to the task, we know what it takes to commit to something for a long time, it is not just talent!
    I can see you have programmed 4 shows. What happens if a person buys a drawing on the first exhibition? Do you take the payment and ask the customer to wait until June 2016 (last exhibition) or you give it at the end of that particular exhibition?
    Thanks again for sharing your great work,
    Martin.

    • This is all a bit different from the 365drawings. Even if the work sells (Jerwood Visual Arts would take 50%, so I’ve priced it at £4000), it would complete the tour.
      I am actually making another version of the same image as part of my research…

  • Hello Bryan,
    It would be good to see your work and others at an exhibition. I can’t join you in London but will go to Falmouth later next year as I live in SW.
    I’ve just completed Part 1 of Drawing 1 and there was no exercise using this approach. My tutor was surprised by the content I sent her, asked for other work which was not in my handbook. She had not been informed by the college of the changes in the content.
    Are you referring to an earlier course book, I wonder?
    Alison

  • You are correct Alison it is in the older version of the course. There is a project in Drawing 2 called Changing the Scale but if it would be a beneficial exercise we could make the original available as a resource on the student site.
    Joanne

  • Well done Bryan what a commitment. Regarding changes in the Course work. I have often been puzzled when looking at other students work when they were supposed to be on the same course as me but their projects were different. The grid exercise is always a helpful way to size up.

  • I love Squaring Up exercises, because they make one really look at space. I wish I had attempted something more ambitious than I did when I was doing Drawing 1. Congratulations Bryan!

  • There’s nothing to stop you revisiting the exercise…
    It’s a great way to force yourself to see the whole thing. If I’d made a drawing from life of the same thing I could have ignored bits or skitted over them a bit. I’m interested in the rigour that the process brings to looking. It’s not unlike the kind of drawing that field archaeologists do when involved in a dig. Although it’s not explicit in my work I like the idea that the drawing isn’t expressive (or perhaps expressionist would be a better term). It’s designed to be a calm reiteration of an image and not some kind of angst that I’m working out. I’m not Munch or Schiele. This tone affects the reading of the image and places it more in the realm of thought than feeling.
    I speak about my work as being part of the legacy of 1960/70s Conceptual Art in that it is made to work out ideas not display emotional or psychological responses. Of course, that coolness can be analysed in terms of me or my psyche, and I’m definitely ‘in’ the work, though I don’t think my presence needs to be exaggerated.

  • Hi Bryan. I would like to join you in London on 19 September. Is it acceptable for someone in the beginning stages of learning drawing to attend? If so, is there anyone else I should tell in OCA? Thanks

  • This visit coincides with the Open House event and from 3pm – if you want – we can go backstage at the space. If you’re not bothered about that, no worries.

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