Drawing is alive and well in a world in thrall to digital technology, as David Whetstone sees at a new exhibition

IN the 21st Century communications aviary of Twittering, Flickr-ing and Googling, plain old drawing could appear brown and dumpy and dodo-like.

It’s what we all do with a crayon or a pencil when we first discover the joy of making a mark – maybe on a bit of card or (when mum’s looking the other way) on the wallpaper.

But then along come more grown up means of artistic expression. Paints replace pencils or – as at the Chelsea School of Art in the early 1990s – video and other technological gizmos replace the lot.

Coincidentally, I arrive at the Durham Art Gallery at the same time as Paul Thomas, co-founder and co-ordinator of the Jerwood Drawing Prize.

He is to open what has become the country’s largest and longest running annual open exhibition dedicated to drawing.

He explains that he started the exhibition with a colleague at the Chelsea School of Art, Anita Taylor.

“We started it in 1994 because we felt students weren’t drawing enough. They had a very structured drawing course in the first year, but they didn’t seem to be too interested by the time they got to the third.

“We decided to hold a national competition to see if anyone was drawing out there – so we ran a national drawing competition on a shoestring.

“We were surprised when 600 people applied. After running it for six or seven years, the Jerwood Foundation stepped in and gave us sponsorship. Now we’re getting 2,500 entries.”

So, far from being a dodo, drawing turned out to be a game old bird that had been thriving happily in the undergrowth. Now it has turned into a bit of a phoenix.

The pick of the latest batch of entries are on display at the Durham Art Gallery, Aykley Heads – the work of 54 artists from around the UK. It is appropriate that it is showing in the North East. There used to be a prestigious competition called the Cleveland Drawing Biennale and Paul Thomas says his competition was devised partly to fill the void when it came to an end.

Paul explains that many artists always did draw. The problem was that galleries didn’t show drawings. He reckons the Jerwood Drawing Prize has helped to put that right, raising the status of the art. It has also stretched the definition of what drawing actually is – as you will see.

While Warren Baldwin’s conventional pencil and charcoal study of a woman, Study for Portrait V, won First Prize, other exhibits are more eyebrow-raising.

There are collages and even DVDs. Sean Maltby and Olly Rooks studied architecture and engineering respectively before moving to fine art.

Their exhibit, Verbing, is a DVD which shows wooden blocks flying through the air and clattering to the ground.

With the proviso that he and Anita Taylor appoint the selectors but don’t make the selection, he makes the case for the DVD, arguing that it shows another way of making lines in space.

A special touch for Durham was the commissioning of some new, wall-based works from Amy Hutchinson, who graduated in the summer from Northumbria University and is now a graduate fellow there.

Amy, originally from Beverley, East Yorkshire, was asked by James Lowther, senior arts development officer at Durham Council, to respond to the gallery building. “My work is about line and shape and responds to space,” she says. One piece, stencilled on the wall next to a window over the stairs, is called Chromatic Blue and echoes the shape of the window.

At initial glance mathematically perfect, it actually isn’t. The human touch contrasts with the window’s rigid lines.

A second, untitled piece features four layers of circles and four colours. Not afraid of the word “pattern”, Amy says she was keen to create an optical illusion.

For her, the Jerwood Drawing Prize provided a challenge and useful exposure.