2002
J a c a r a n d a A c q u i s i t i v e D r a w i n g Aw a r d
Introduction
Drawing On a Thought
The Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award (JADA) provides us with a unique opportunity to
explore the complexity of what drawing is today. The JADA seeks to encourage and promote
innovation and excellence in drawing and has played a vital role in fostering Australian
drawing practice. The fact that the Award is continuing to grow and attract artists of national
significance is testimony to the importance of drawing practice to artists today.
Once upon a time there was an argument between two of the great nineteenth century
French artists, the classicist and master of line, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and his great
rival, the romanticist and champion of colour, Eugéne Delacroix. It was an altercation about
the intrinsic nature of art making and at the height of the quarrel Ingres, a superb
draughtsman, spat at Delacroix the immortal line that ‘drawing is the probity of art.’1 For Ingres,
art’s ‘truth’, its grounding proposition, its raison d’être if you like, could be found only
in the drawn moment—everything else was mere decoration.
Grafton Regional Gallery has acquired an impressive collection of contemporary Australian
drawings since the inception of the JADA fourteen years ago. This Award is the focus of the
Gallery's acquisition policy, and it is exciting to see the collection develop every two years
through further acquisitions and differing Judges' approaches to the selection of artworks.
Artists were invited to submit up to two drawings that had been executed during the past
year. The 2002 JADA attracted a record number of entries from all over Australia. The
selection of artworks for the exhibition and tour of the 2002 JADA was a long process
involving a selection panel of six industry professionals. The resulting selection is the largest
exhibition to date in the Award's history, and one that adds new dimensions to the question
of what constitutes a drawing.
The demand from venues to receive the tour of the JADA is clearly an indication of the
popularity of the Award and the genre of drawing. The Gallery is delighted to be able to
extend the tour of the JADA each year to different venues in both metropolitan and regional
areas allowing a greater number of visitors to enjoy the diversity of the exhibition.
This exhibition would not have been possible without the generosity of our many sponsors.
Special mention needs to be given to the major contributors to the JADA – our own Friends
of the Grafton Regional Gallery who raise the $10,000 prize money needed for the JADA
which is not included in the Gallery's operational budget. The Friends have not only assisted
financially, but have given many hours behind the scenes at the various fund raisers held for
the JADA. The NSW Ministry for the Arts has also contributed to the success of the 2002
JADA. Thanks are also extended to the continued support of the Grafton City Council.
My thanks go to the Judge, Mr. Edmund Capon, Director of the Art Gallery of New South
Wales for selecting the winner and the benefit of his experience in helping to select the
further acquisitions to the Gallery's collection. I would also like to express my gratitude to
my staff at the Gallery for their dedication, expertise and good humour.
I would also like to thank the exhibiting galleries for their support of the tour of this exhibition.
I hope all visitors enjoy the exhibition, and that artists Australia wide are encouraged to enter
the JADA in 2004.
Susi Muddiman
Director, Grafton Regional Gallery
President, Regional Galleries Association of NSW Inc.
1
This story, although long ago, far away and probably apocryphal, demonstrates the salient
point that few issues divide arts practitioners in quite the same way that drawing does. The
efficacy of drawing, the role it plays in the development and articulation of an artist’s practice,
its status as both medium and discipline, has been the subject of passionate debate for the
last couple of hundred years and it is a dispute which doesn’t show any sign of abatement.
There are those for whom drawing is merely a means to an end: a convention of composition
and line, a mechanism for ‘working out’ the final product. In this traditional application of
drawing’s means we can understand the way in which the graphic registers the very
processes of art’s making.
However, for others, the actuality of drawing is, of itself, a foundational modality. For many
artists drawing is their principle methodology: the way in which they perceive, negotiate and
render the world. Such an artistic practice is cognisant of drawing as a body of knowledge —
a discipline, and in much the same way that the study of history and literature are discipline
specific, drawing too has its own set of parameters and fields of inquiry. In this form drawing
is an intrinsic part of the intellectual process of being an artist and is the conduit through
which artists access other ways of knowing and understanding — ‘drawing’ them into their
practice. Thus we must recognise that the study and the custom of drawing encompasses
the entire perceptual province of artistic practice. It is, first and foremost, a cognitive process
which, as the art writer Pamela Lee explains, “always refers back to the necessarily restive
and uncontainable, and that the material trace of the activity f less the point of the exercise
than the inevitable fallout.”2
Lee’s definition highlights one of the most important aspects of drawing — that the practice
of drawing is in the ‘doing’ of it. The artist Mel Boucher describes drawing as “a verb” and
thus the conceptual framework of drawing is always articulated through what is essentially a
performative act.3 For example, drawing is noted for its physicality and the evident relationship
between artist, material and form through which a moment, a gesture, is embodied. However,
it is not a hierarchical nor a linear model which places the artist as master of form or as slave
to material but rather one that recognises the interdependency of each element in the
process. What we must perceive within this performative indication is the way in which each
component is mutually constitutive of the other: the “gesture is always equally informed by
the thing it acts upon.”4 Thus the properties of a material, the components of a form and the
moment of a mark are bound together within the act of drawing.
2
Drawing occupies a position that is both peripheral and central to contemporary art practice
and it is this apparent contradiction that is its greatest strength. Traditionally, drawing has
never occupied the heroic realms and monumental stature of painting and sculpture, it has
always been thought of as a quieter, more transitory product. However this lack of status,
this very quietude, has worked for drawing in its pivotal relationship to contemporary art for
it did not have the same definitive boundaries to defend. Because drawing has so often been
treated as a process of mediation it found fertile ground in contemporary art’s relationship
to the exploration of more experimental forms and actions. Drawing’s flexibility, its economy
of means, its ability to articulate the ephemeral and the everyday, its relationship to process
and cause, its contemplative properties have generated a flourishing set of practitioners
and audiences for this most limber and elastic of mediums.
As you survey this year’s entries I know that you will marvel at the multitude of practices that
are embraced under the category of drawing and by the breadth and depth of its visual and
conceptual field. Drawing is, without a doubt, the most versatile of practices: one that some
artists return to and others never leave but which, overall, is distinguished by its drive towards
a certain veracity of experience. This is why the Grafton Regional Gallery’s Jacaranda Acquisitive
Drawing Award is such a seminal event: why it is so important that drawing continues to
generate this level of experienced and expert attention. What JADA offers us is the opportunity
to explore the way that drawing resonates as a contemporary medium. It allows us to trace
the inscriptions and marks that this artistic practice makes upon our understanding of art’s
limitless possibilities.
Carol Endean Little b.1946
Hillside 2001
charcoal on Arches rag paper
77 x 174cm
Kate Ravenswood
Lecturer in Art Theory
School of Contemporary Art
Southern Cross University
endnotes
3
1
I tell this story of Ingres for lyndall adams who still loves it, believes it and lives by it.
2
P M Lee, “Some Kinds of Duration: The Temporality of Drawing as Process Art”, in C. Butler (ed)
AfterImage: Drawing through Process, exhibition catalogue, Los Angles: The Museum of Contemporary Art,
1999, p 31.
3
M. Boucher, “Anyone Can Learn to Draw”, American Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Munich: Galerie Hiener
Fredrich, 1969, n.p.
4
P M Lee, ibid.
Daniel Butterworth b.1973
Once upon a time 2002
wax crayon, graphite, pigment and chinagraph on paper
120 x 160cm
4
Michael Zavros b.1974
Plot 2002
charcoal on paper
73 x 146cm
Melissa Hirsch b.1966
The lines of a wave 2002
cane and pins
21 x 110cm
Warren Breninger b.1948
Resurrection of the Living and the Dead,
series IV no. 25 2001
digital print on Arches paper
112 x 83cm
5
Lara Ivanovic, b 1967
Horsepen, GoGo Station, Fitzroy Crossing 2001
charcoal on paper
100 x 130cm
6
John R Walker b.1957
At lake’s edge 2002
acrylic on pape,
110 x 150cm
Amanda Robins b.1961
Cashmere coat 2002
pastel and charcoal on Arches watercolour paper
150 x 85cm
Gary Jolley b.1952
Border crossing: between Bridge St and Nolan 2002
mixed media on paper,
76 x 112cm
Steve Lopes b.1971
Refugee with native plant 2002
mixed media and charcoal
130 x 75cm
Anthony Sillavan b.1955
Schematic wall drawing mmxl 2002
cut cardboard on paper
73 x 57cm
7
8
Anna McAuley b.1970
2002 connection 2002
stainless steel and letters on acetate
120 x 150cm
R V Rockov b.1950
Lagoon, XXVI 2002
mixed media
88 x 118cm
Gary Worley b.1949
Light in the east 2002
pencil on paper
85 x 105cm
9
Francesca Mataraga b 1971
View from the drawing studio I 2001
charcoal on paper
140 x 110cm
10
Robert Moore b.1964
Dry Clarence landscape 2002
pastel on painted board fixed with clear enamel
115 x 198cm
Janette Vance b.1966
Dress sequence no. 2 2001
pastel, pencil and collage
74 x 54cm (unframed); 100 x 70cm (framed)
Deborah Klein b.1951
Untitled 2002
oil pastel on paper
76.5 x 57cm
Melanie Cansell b.1976
Autumn afternoon in Potts Point 2002
charcoal and watercolour on paper
120 x 125cm
Anthea O’Brien b.1945
The process of thought (detail) 2001
digital drawing
55 x 98cm
11
Garry Andrews b.1957
Portrait of an unknown artist 2001
mixed media
133 x 100cm
12
Stephen Spurrier b.1945
B is for Barcelona 2002
graphite, oil-stick, pencil, pen, spray paint and collage
as a shaped, vertically unfolding Artist’s book
200 x 14cm (unfolded)
Anne Judell b.1942
Rite XIV 2001
charcoal, pastel and pencil on paper
118 x 85cm
Produced with the support of the Australia Council through a
Development Grant/Studio Residency in Barcelona during 2002.
Julie Jame b.1946
Vine VI 2001
ink on paper
76 x 56cm
Julie Jame b.1946
Vine IV 2001
ink on paper
76 x 56cm
13
Lorraine Biggs b.1960
Treading lightly 2002
pastel, chalk and charcoal on hemp paper
90 x 132cm
14
Darren Bryant b.1971
You said something (detail) 2002
blue carbon paper, transfer drawing, relief block and embossing
18.5 x 147.5cm
Emma Middleton b.1971
Essence 2002
pastel on paper
132 x 102cm
Christopher Orchard b.1950
Step lightly 2001
charcoal, acrylic and chinagraph on paper,
150 x 165cm (unframed)
lyndall adams b.1958
approaching red 2002
pencil on paper
87 x 66cm
15
Shelagh Morgan b.1955
The grammar of an ambiguous moment 2002
graphite and oil-stick (on ply panels) and Artist’s book
2 panels each 120 x 90cm and artist’s book
16
Jo Bertini b.1964
Sequential study of Drusila Modjeska 2002
lithography crayon on perspex
34 x 81cm
Wendy J Taylor b.1963
Purple aura across the Clarence 2002
pastel and pencil on paper
87 x 67cm
Luke Doyle b.1967
Echelon 2002
electrical tape on canvas board
12.5 x 17.5cm
17
Jo Bertini b.1964
Lipstick landscape 2002
oil-stick on perspex
49 x 88cm
18
Shane Jones b.1955
Untitled #98 2002
oil pastel on paper
76 x 57cm
Julian Martin b.1969
Untitled (Rectangles) 2002
pastel on rag paper
60 x 50cm
Katherine Hattam b.1950
Four kitchen chairs 2001
pastel and gouache on paper
125 x 125cm
Ken Smith b.1951
Study for, Table, Objects, Ocean 5 2002
coloured pencils on paper
56 x 76cm
19
Brent Young b.1974
Temporary modern con 2002
graphite, charcoal and acrylic paint on canvas and board
122 x 183cm
20
Russell Craig b.1953
Chinese whispers 2002
conte on Lana paper
five images; each 77 x 64cm
21
22
Rita Lazauskas b.1958
Dear diary – a week in Adelaide 2002
charcoal on paper
12 x 94cm
Mark Howson b.1961
Seated nude 2001
charcoal on paper
99 x 71cm
Kerry McInnis b.1952
Lucy 2001
charcoal, conte and pastel on paper
67 x 45cm (unframed)
Julie Harris b.1953
Walkthroughs Shoalhaven pinks 2002
ink and gouache on paper
75 x 165cm
23
Nicholas Harding b.1956
Bagman in Eddy Avenue 2002
ink on paper
128 x 119cm
24
Lesa Hepburn b.1963
Breathing space 2002
hibiscus tiliaceous fibre and black ink
127 x 65cm
photography by Pete Johnson
Patrycia Buckland b.1946
Script from an Antique Land 2001
ink on paper
56 x 75cm
Vlad Kolas b.1973
Group sex 2002
ink, charcoal, gouache and chalk on cardboard
200 x 150cm
Rienne De Mattia b.1982
Life Support 2002
charcoal and pastel on paper
91 x 65.2cm
25
Jo d’Hage b.1959
Split Memory 2002
charcoal, acrylic and pastel on paper
108 x 85cm
26
Sue Harris b.1954
The ridge revisited I 2002
charcoal, oilstick, pastel and oil pastel on paper
134.4 x 103.4cm (framed)
Elizabeth Lamont b.1959
The three graces 2001
charcoal on paper
168 x 180cm
Kim Maple b.1957
Self 2002
charcoal and ink on paper
100 x 140cm (unframed)
27
28
Jill Sampson b.1968
Dark spiral memory 2001
ink, charcoal, acrylic and crayon on paper
77 x 115cm (unframed)
Mike Riley b.1956
Storm north of Armidale 2002
pen and pencil on paper
75 x 110cm (unframed)
David Nixon b.1969
Waterhole (the source of life) 2002
pen on paper
approx. 18 x 18.5cm
Stephen Armstrong b.1957
Night sky 2002
ink and gouache on paper
150 x 140cm (unframed)
29
John Philippides b.1945
Portrait study 2001
leadpoint on paper
41 x 29cm (unframed)
30
Acknowledgements
Grafton Regional Gallery
Director: Susi Muddiman
Education/Public Programs Officer: Jude McBean
Administration Officer: Avron Thompson
This catalogue is published by the Grafton Regional Gallery for the exhibition 2002 Jacaranda
Acquisitive Drawing Award held at the Grafton Regional Gallery, 23 October – 8 December
2002 and touring to a number of galleries in New South Wales and Tasmania during 2003
and 2004.
The exhibition has been assisted by the Friends of the Gallery, Grafton City Council and the
New South Wales Government Ministry for the Arts.
Acknowledgements
Many people have contributed to the development of the 2002 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing
Award. The panel which selected the artworks from the hundreds of entries were Gary Corbett,
Joe Eisenberg OAM, Pam Fysh, Simeon Kronenberg, Susi Muddiman and John Walsh. Thank
you to the Friends of the Grafton Regional Gallery, Grafton City Council and the Grafton
Regional Gallery's Advisory Committee for their support and assistance.
2002 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award
Judge: Edmund Capon, Director, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Exhibition and Tour Manager: Susi Muddiman
Public Programs and Education Kit: Jude McBean
Grafton Regional Gallery
158 Fitzroy Street, Grafton NSW 2460
All correspondence to: PO Box 25, Grafton NSW 2460
Telephone: 02 66423177
Facsimile: 02 66432663
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.graftongallery.nsw.gov.au
ISBN
GRAFTON REGIONAL GALLERY
Home of the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award
0-9589805-4-3
Catalogue
Text Copyright: Grafton Regional Gallery and the authors
Images: Copyright of the artists
Catalogue coordination: Grafton Regional Gallery staff
Design: Patrick Leong and Christina Fedrigo
Printing: Bloxham & Chambers Lithographic Printers
City Living – Country Style
All works are available for sale unless otherwise specified
Dimensions are height by width
Purchased works are not available until the completion of the tour
Any freight costs are the responsibility of the buyer
31