Entries were of a very high standard and used a variety of media and techniques - from traditional ink drawings on paper, to white ink on tracing paper and parchment ornamentally cut and tailored, to graphite on aluminium.

The £1,000 prize was awarded to Joan Gabie, in respect of a selection of beautiful drawings from her 'China workbook' 2005 (left).

Produced during a visit to Guangzhou and Kunming in southern China, she found inspiration from watching manufacturers at work - repetitive laborious machining of clothing using familiar techniques. Her drawings 'emulated the arduous labour by depicting objects encountered there, interspersed with dead or dying flowers and ripened fruit'. Her own tools were gel pen on shiny printing paper.

Joan's application was made to finance the extension and development of her drawing practices since returning from the time she spent in China in October 2004. She stated that she was 'fascinated by the idea of a language-less book just using the ink drawings on a folded out page to initiate a narrative', particularly bearing in mind the 'highly graphic, pictorial language' of Cantonese/Mandarin characters. Moving away from drawing on paper, she has been experimenting with working directly onto glass using window cleaning fluid and rag (a technique she witnessed in China) - a practice involving documenting parts of the drawing's construction and deconstruction – 'another strong metaphor for a nation so completely transforming itself daily'.

Joan was 'absolutely thrilled' to win and is intending to use her prize money to film her sketchbooks so that their contents can be more widely shared; the books are fragile and she does not want to dismantle them. The filming will be done as if the books are being shown to one or two people, quietly in an intimate way. The pages will be turned gently by putting an index finger behind each page and slowly rotating the pages over on a continuous roll – almost like a scroll – just as if they were being viewed in a Chinese home; in a 'travelling' narrative. We look forward to seeing the results.

 

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