Attempting to review the Society of Wood Engraver’s 84th annual exhibition is no mean feat, if only because of the sheer volume of subjects and styles on display. Founded in 1920, with the aim of forging connections between artists and raising awareness of the medium, the Society hosts an open call each year for artist’s submissions, both locally and internationally. The result is an absolutely prolific display of the medium’s expressive capabilities, with over 120 prints lining the walls of the North Wall Arts Centre this year (all for sale, if you’re so inclined).

The rough layout of the exhibition goes some way to making sense both of the quantity and radically divergent subject matter of the year’s submissions. One wall seems largely dedicated to portraiture and other representations of the human form; the centre’s far wall is devoted to depictions of rural landscapes and flora. An adjoining wall centres on architecture and other man-made structures, while opposite are the entries that delve into the animal kingdom. But those broad categorisations really don’t do justice to the scope of the works within them; how, for instance, to compare the dynamic, richly textured velocity of Colin See-Paynton’s Flying With Hares, Running with Swallows to the folkloric, tapestry-style detailing of India Rose-Bird’s Conversations with a Familiar?

What I found particularly astonishing (as an admitted newcomer to the medium) was the level of finely-rendered detail that can be achieved with the tools of the trade. I certainly expected the exhibition to have a significant focus on the natural world, which it delivers in spades; wood engraving seems to have a natural affinity in depicting the rugged textures of bark and stone, the intricacies of fur and plumage, or the rolling striations of open fields. Chris Daunt’s almost Cubist rendering of the Bridge at Aira Force uses interlocking layers of alternating linework to create a landscape simultaneously jagged and fluid. Hilary Paynter’s Seal Island is staggering in both size and particularity, gaggles of houses, craggy rock faces and coastal fauna all painstakingly rendered on a mountainous scale. Mike Allison’s playful use of colour adds a striking visual quirk to the armoured exoskeleton of his Willow-Patterned Woodlouse.

However, I was most excited by the artists that used this capacity for fine detail for more intimate or experimental means. In a welcome change of pace, Chris Pig uses realism to lend an evocative warmth and familiarity to more domestic and interior settings, placing us in the middle of everyday ritual (food preparation in The High Pavement and a haircut in Barber Shop, Oxford). Anne Desmet’s pillared, collaged composition creates a sense of divine continuity in her intensely realised Tower of Angels, while Lightwell’s interplay between the constancy of architecture and the fluidity of light and colour puts one in mind of a flickering camera lens. Kouki Tsuritani leans heavily into an unsettling, minimal surrealism, his architectural structures elongating and undulating in on themselves against an inky black void. The fine linework on The Spiral, in particular, is disturbingly arthropodic, recalling a curled centipede.

Peter Lawrence and Paul Dunmall’s Duets series are of particular note, based on Dunmall’s free jazz performances. Improvised by the two artists on the same block without any drawing or discussion, they vibrate with bombastic collaborative energy. Twenty One is a miasma of signifiers from cave paintings to Hellenistic pots to Mickey Mouse. Twenty Two veers wholly into the realm of the abstract; sparse lines give way to deep, dense hatching; jagged edges are circumscribed with disjointed arcs of white; each section’s energy is deeply distinct yet fundamentally harmonious (an apt analogy for the exhibition space as a whole).

Some surrounding aspects seem a bit half-formed in comparison – a cabinet containing examples of engraving tools and books with engraved illustrations adds an element of physicality, but these are not annotated with any further detail as to their usage or context. Nonetheless, it is a commendable effort by the North Wall to take such a disparate and extensive collection and create a space that maintains a sense of cohesion throughout. All the works exhibited are technically impressive, but it’s those pieces that go beyond the purely representational, that play with the properties, expectations and expressive potential of the craft, that really leave a mark.