The trifecta of art prizes at the Art Gallery of New South Wales - the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman - appears to be intolerant of rivals. When the Photographic Portrait Prize entered its company, after a short stint it was dispatched to Canberra, where it now occupies pride of place at the National Portrait Gallery. The Dobell Drawing Prize was admitted into this gathering of prizes in 1993 and lasted a decade before it was allocated its own slot in the gallery's exhibition calendar, where it survived for another decade, before being inexplicably dumped by the Sydney gallery.
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For the two decades that it lasted, the Dobell Prize for Drawing was the premier annual exhibition devoted to the art of drawing. In some ways it became the national forum on drawing and in many ways it was a more serious exhibition than the prize trifecta which always had something of a circus atmosphere about it. It was more serious in that it was curated and judged by a distinguished artist or art curator, for example, Arthur Boyd, John Olsen, Aida Tomescu and Betty Churcher, rather than by a panel of trustees dominated by captains of industry and media executives, as was the case with the Archibald and the Wynne. It was highly regarded by artists as a serious exhibition, where to be included was a badge of distinction, rather than a reward for having cracked a winning formula through which to catch the trustees' eye.
In Australian art in the 1970s and 1980s, drawing fell out of vogue in many Australian art schools, where a preoccupation with poorly understood French critical theory and vague notions of ''deskilling'' as a prerequisite for postmodernist art practice led to the neglect of basic drawing skills. In the 1990s, students started to vote with their feet and demanded instruction in life drawing and figure drawing, and the art of drawing experienced a revival. For Sir William Dobell, draftsmanship was central to his art and it was quite appropriate for the Dobell Foundation to fund a drawing prize, one which quickly took centre stage in the national drawing revival.
This exhibition presents a selection of the winners of the Dobell Drawing Prize, plus a few select drawings acquired by the Dobell Foundation for the Sydney gallery collection. It is a strong, diverse and amazing exhibition which can be interpreted as a demonstration of some of the different orientations in Australian drawing. There are the vivid expressionist drawings of artists including Kevin Connor, Jan Senbergs, Nicholas Harding, Garry Shead, Pam Hallandal, Wendy Sharpe and David Fairbairn. Then there is the abstracted mark making of Aida Tomescu, the inventive emblematic creations of Gareth Sansom and the wonderfully obsessive vision of Allan Mitelman. Drawing embraces the fantasy creations of Colin Lanceley as well as the exacting precision in the naturalistic observations of David Rose. It is an exhibition which demands close viewing and brings with it huge visual and intellectual rewards. I do not think that I have missed a single Dobell exhibition in Sydney over the past couple of decades, so for me there was a personal feeling of meeting up with old friends.
This travelling exhibition, curated by Anne Ryan and Hendrik Kolenberg for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, marks a celebration of 20 years of the Dobell Drawing Prize and prompts the obvious question: if the Dobell Prize for Drawing was such a significant and successful annual event, why did the Sydney Gallery terminate it? I suppose that one day we will find out.
