Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019 Winners

​Overall Winner 2019: Sophie Peters 

1. Tell us a little bit about your practice – what medium do you use and why? What ideas do you explore? 

I am interested in the use of art and language in protecting human rights, disrupting societal assumptions (particularly regarding gender roles, power systems, consumerism and identity) and representing unheard voices. I am primarily an oil painter, but I employ any medium that seems right for the topic (including acrylics, mixed media, film and text). I believe in the intersection of art with all other aspects of life including science and the politics of the everyday. Art is not simply for the gallery; it is for capturing moments of conflict in our daily lives and making the unnoticed poignant.

I like to think about environmentalism, binaries (abstraction vs representation, power vs weakness) and ways of expressing emotion through visual media to allow me to connect with people. I enjoy using vivid colours, I believe viewing art should be a lively experience. 

2. How do you feel about being the Overall Winner for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019?

It feels incredible! I feel I have learned so much about the art world through winning the prize and speaking with its coordinators. Winning has also given me a massive confidence boost and meant I have had more success selling works. I feel lucky to be included among the other winners, as the shortlist was incredibly talented and there were thousands of entrants. I feel it has taught me invaluable lessons about commercial art, London as an artist city and prizes in general.

3. Do you have any tips or things that you’ve found useful when applying to prizes that your peers may benefit from knowing?

Taking a clear photograph and using good grammar is definitely important! I wouldn’t worry about not getting accepted, because even if you didn’t study at an art college (or don’t work with a style that is currently popular), there will be a niche for you somewhere/sometime.

4. Where would you like your practice/career to be in 5 years’ time?

I would like to produce larger artworks, and to paint more portraits on commission. My dream is to create huge, multimedia pieces and run my own art space. Having painted murals over the last two years I find it frustrating to work on a small scale as I have been, particularly as I am also a very fast painter and seem to be continuously running out of room. 

In 5 years I’d like my practice to encompass film, so I can connect to larger audiences and work with ambitious and/or socially engaged clients, who want to get important messages and questions out into the public.  I am interested in public engagement and with getting people into galleries (or getting galleries to people!).

5. If you could change one thing about the art world what would it be?

Just one? Hmm...
I think its all about representation. Lots of places are getting better at this, but listening to gay, poor, female, non white folx in creative institutions is imperative. Being able to change and be flexible is underrated and often galleries and collections are STILL saturated with middle/upper class men. Corporations really need to invest in diversity and try and look to the future rather than the past.

I feel that many people cannot survive as artists because it is not valued as a profession the way desk jobs are, or because it is sometimes financially unstable. Because of this, many artists need to have savings or know that if art failed them they would be supported by other means. This means that it is becoming a world filled with only one type of artist, art that plays it safe, art that only offers a narrow set of experiences and opinions. So it also needs to be easier to live as an artist in order for representation to change. 

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Sculpture Award Winner 2019: Ruth Brenner

1. Tell us a little bit about your practice – what medium do you use and why? What ideas do you explore? 

My practice is intuitive based on material exploration and the act of making. An interest in the study of matter together with the fulfilment experienced whilst using one’s hands, not only to produce something but also to be fully engaged in the process of making, are important elements within my work.  As the daughter of an engineer and scientist, I was brought up in modern industrial town in Scotland in a household where making and repairing were normal activities.  This environment of ingenuity, experimentation and a methodical approach has undoubtedly shaped me as an artist.
Much of my work has strong references to the body either in scale, in the characteristics of the material, or in the method in which it is made.  I have worked in a diverse range of materials and processes, however, at the moment I am using clay and mixed media to research the elements I am most interested in: an exploration of materials; and the bodily (both physical and mental) act of making.  The elemental nature of clay is important as it is the most ‘base’ of materials, but clay also has a life of its own: it is malleable and elastic; you have to move with it and work with it; and its surface carries traces of that journey of creation.  Using the elemental forces of earth, water and fire together with other material inclusions, such as metals and organic materials, I hope to make works that suggest both fragility and strength / decay and rebirth.

2. How do you feel about being the Sculpture Award Winner for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019?

I’m thrilled to have been selected as the winner or the Sculpture Award for this year’s Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize.  It is a privilege to have the opportunity to showcase my work in such a wonderful space and location.  Although my motivation to make work is not for recognition, it is very gratifying to have validation that my work is of interest.  My thanks go to all those involved

3. Do you have any tips or things that you’ve found useful when applying to prizes that your peers may benefit from knowing?

My primary tips to peers when applying to prizes and competitions is to be persistent and resilient - do not lose that inner belief.  From a more practical perspective, it is important to accurately record applications made and the outcomes (whether successful or not) for future reference, review and revision.

4.  Where would you like your practice/career to be in 5 years’ time?

In 5 years’ time I would ideally like to have gallery representation; to have a home studio/workshop in the garden; I would like my practice to continue developing in the form of research and in practice; and to have successfully completed my practice led PhD.
If you could change one thing about the art world what would it be?

5. If I could change one thing about the art world it would be?

To instil an ethos of valuing emerging artists by remunerating them for their time and work in order that they can continue making art.  Opportunities such as internships and residencies in London are often too expensive for an artist living outside London to contemplate. 

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Choice Award Winner 2019: Roberto Grosso

1. Tell us a little bit about your practice – what medium do you use and why? What ideas do you explore? 

My art takes its inspiration from music and is produced in metal, metallic paper or perspex. The key elements of my art are the use of vibrant colours and augmented reality - which brings the artwork to life by showing the stages of its creation to a soundtrack of the music that inspired it.

2. How do you feel about winning the Choice Award for. the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019?

I'm proud to have won this prestigious award, and particularly the Choice award. My art is being recognized on all latitudes for its uniqueness in the method and execution. "Eleanor Rigby", the winning piece, has received great feedback internationally. I created a small exhibition with my best works to be visited and experienced with augmented reality at the Ashurst HQ in Liverpool Street.

3. Do you have any tips or things that you’ve found useful when applying to prizes that your peers may benefit from knowing?

Quality of work is essential. I know this prize recognizes the best, so my tip would be to always ask if the submitted work represents the best of your practice.

4. Where would you like your practice/career to be in 5 years’ time?
I would love to be doing this full time, and I’m working every day to make it happen. I’m already exhibiting all over the world, so I think I just need to find the right agent, gallery to believe in my practice.

5. If you could change one thing about the art world what would it be?

I would love it to have more balance. There is an imbalance in the way it is directed, by only a small group of wealthy people who will have a final say on your career. We need more meritocracy.

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Photography Award Winner 2019: Brendon Kahn

1. Tell us a little bit about your practice – what medium do you use and why? What ideas do you explore? 

​My visual process reflects a collective ridiculousness that in many cases marries both the absurd and ironic. Currently, I am working on a lens based series called YOU CAN LIVE FOREVER IN PARADISE ON EARTH that dives into an estranged exploration of the fault lines in human nature. I like to think that my approach is like a shotgun spray; sometimes the impact is immediate while other times it’s faint like a single pellet that grazes the skin or even misses contact all together where the anxiety of being hit is a lasting mark itself. This translation is an experiment where the life of the work is channeled by dissimilarity but ultimately lives inside the same uncomfortable zoo. The unshakable connective tissue that keeps it all glued together is guided by energy. Whether its visceral or neglected voids, I tend to follow things that are confusing initially where the uncertainty drives an energy that makes it harder to consider what is actually real. I like to describe this as my own way of navigating a path of curiosity through a strange mirage manufactured in the vicinity of contrast and unsettling moments. The camera acts as a vehicle that enables expression while being frequently guided by nonsensical elements bisecting various levels of our lives. Using analog processes is an integral part of my practice that helps me slow down and consider how I am able to restrict and control, like the images themselves, the simplification or confusion. 

2. How do you feel about winning the Photography Award for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019?

I am extremely honored and grateful to be this year’s photo recipient. On a personal level it gives me motivation to work harder and more critically to continue to produce impactful work in the future. I have never been to the UK before so this opportunity is extra special given the enormous presence art and history. 

3. Do you have any tips or things that you’ve found useful when applying to prizes that your peers may benefit from knowing?

I am still learning and working to understand useful tips myself, however, I would recommend consistently applying to as many opportunities as possible because you will never know unless you give it a shot. With choosing works it can be tricky and limiting but ultimately go with your gut, it will be always be the most true. 

4. Where would you like your practice/career to be in 5 years’ time?

Wow, that’s a difficult question - My life as an artist has changed so much change over the past five years but a few very high reaching goals I am still striving toward include: to be accepted into an excelling MFA program, represented by a gallery, win one round of Foto Film Award, make the FOAM Shortlist, make a book with MACK, have work shown in Paris Photo, completed a few residencies, and be making my living full time as an artist. 

5. If you could change one thing about the art world what would it be?
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I feel I cannot wholly critique the emerging art world because I have so much more to learn both good and bad. One consideration weighing down the emerging art world is around representation and access to art, which I feel are getting better but still have an uphill road to climb. 

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New Media Award Winner: Thomas Webb 

1.Tell us a little bit about your practice – what medium do you use and why? What ideas do you explore? 

Most of my practice starts with programming. I will build some kind of simulation, algorithm or video game like system using rules I’ve invented. It’s like playing god. You can build your own universe and the planets in your universe can do an insane amount of things every second. They can communicate with other planets and even build their own solar systems.

Sometimes I will venture out into the internet and grab real-time data to drive my works using various APIs. I guess that’s like going into other dimensions and bringing back parallel versions of things. I watch way too much sci-fi. 

Then I work out how to display that work, the code, the programs, the digital realm. It cannot be shown to the world on a TV or a screen, it’s not going to stop anyone for a minute to think. Therefore, I’ve spent a large part of my career building new ways of displaying digital data. Mainly smart mirrors and my own invention, the digital infinity mirror. This allows me to reflect dark light through a mirror and replicate bright light into an infinity effect. It’s really cool, it tricks the viewer, using a light illusion, into thinking they’re not looking at a computer screen but instead a moving infinity mirror, which has a 3D perspective that moves as the viewer rotates around the piece. 

I use this medium because it places the viewer inside my work, like a real augmented reality. Their reflection becomes one with the subject of my work. The infinity mirrors, they go a step further and create a portal for my viewer to step into. I took a huge amount of inspiration from Ivan Navarro and his work with infinity.

In terms of what I code, and how I create it. I usually come up with an idea out of no were. ‘What if I could build this, using this data?’

Then I go and work out a way to code it, hack it or visualise it. Along the way the code, the subject, it all evolves. Then one piece becomes another and I end up with a series of 15 pieces programmed from the same framework that all respond to different real-time events. 

Then again, sometimes I just make things, it’s a feeling. A reflection of my present state. I don’t even know what it means, It just is. Sometimes the piece becomes the piece once it’s finished, I name it after the first thing it makes me feel.

2. How do you feel about winning the New Media Award for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019?

It’s really cool, not more so that I got shortlisted, but that art like mine can get recognition. Net art and technology driven art isn’t something that’s got a lot of exposure in the public eye, or the art world. I’ve been so shocked walking around the major art fairs this year and found zero artworks containing serious code/tech. To think that this medium has been selected to win the new media prize is just insane. The fact it’s my work, mind bending. I feel immensely proud, but also immensely excited to see what happened next year. I hope more net art, code art, programmers, conceptual programmers and the likes come forward and present their work and get the recognition as legitimate artists. 

3. Do you have any tips or things that you’ve found useful when applying to prizes that your peers may benefit from knowing?

Be yourself. Don’t be anybody else. Make artwork that looks good.  Sounds dumb but I mean, finish it well. Frame it, refine the aesthetic of it. The content is whatever but how you present your work defines how seriously you take it. 

4. Where would you like your practice/career to be in 5 years’ time?

Worldwide. 

5. If you could change one thing about the Emerging Art World what would it be?

To be honest, you’re never going to change the waves of the ocean. Just make a big splash right. The waves will respond. 

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​Highly Commended Artist 2019: Alessandra Bettolo

1. Tell us a little bit about your practice – what medium do you use and why? What ideas do you explore? 

I am an architect, designer and painter. My passions, interests and skills cross over disciplines including architecture, interior architecture, product design, visual design and painting.
I was trained in Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy; I hold an MA in Visual Design from the Scuola Politecnica di Design in Milan and a diploma in Contemporary Portraiture from The Art Academy in London. 
As a painter, I paint the life I experienced, driven by the choices I made. In my large size portraits I challenge issues important to me, exposing the incredible harm society has made by dividing people according to artificial constraints of colour, ethnicity, gender, geography, religion and politics. Division has created stereotypes and discrimination that are still affecting our world. My work is against them. 
The medium I mostly use is oil on canvas. The oil technique carries a historical meaning in the painting tradition, linked to power and status. Oil on canvas has always been used in the portrait painting western tradition to represent solely the established protagonists. I want the under-represented people, to gain the protagonist status. My sitters look contemporary, wearing everyday clothing and hairstyle. I rework similar poses featured in paintings and sculptures from the Western History of Art. This juxtaposition between the new and the classic representations creates a space for a new dialogue, awakening complex issues that often remain silent. 

2. How do you feel about being Shortlisted and selected as Highly Commended for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019? 

An overwhelming positive mixed feeling made of reward, surprise and confidence. 

3. Do you have any tips or things that you’ve found useful when applying to prizes that your peers may benefit from knowing?

I find that helps to have the possibility to submit more than one piece of artwork. 

4. Where would you like your practice/career to be in 5 years’ time? 

I would like my portraits to be shown in art galleries, to be appreciated by many people and grow awareness around issues that some people don’t even know of their existence. I believe in art as weapon for social change: I want a better world for my kids and their generation. 

5. If you could change one thing about the art world what would it be?

To follow what Ashurst is doing to increase new artist accessibility to the Art World via increasing awards’ entry affordability. 

​Extra artwork details: 
Untitled
oil and acrylic on canvas
dim 120x150cm
2019

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Highly Commended Artist 2019: Elliot Nehra

1. Tell us a little bit about your practice – what medium do you use and why? What ideas do you explore? 

I make oil paintings that range in scale, I like to work on different sizes whilst making series of work as I find it to demand more from my practice. My paintings are inspired by the world around me and the information that I collect on day to day basis. This information that I collect helps to create a surreal space that is filled with iconography and metaphor. 

2 How do you feel about being Shortlisted for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019?

It’s very exciting, I’ve had a solid year of painting, so it’s refreshing to know the hard works paid off.

3. Do you have any tips or things that you’ve found useful when applying to prizes that your peers may benefit from knowing?

Don’t be disheartened by rejection, part of becoming an artist is hanging in there and continuing to make work and apply for things. 

4. Where would you like your practice/career to be in 5 years’ time?

I’d like to be painting and showing my work, anywhere in the world really as I would like to take my practice international.

5. If you could change one thing about the art world what would it be?

I would make it so there were more opportunities for young emerging artists to show their works in exhibition spaces and for there to be more opportunities outside of London. 

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Highly Commended Artist 2019: Noa Pane

1. Tell us a little bit about your practice – what medium do you use and why? What ideas do you explore?

I see my work as a tool for discovery, a series of experiments which explore physical events. Through ephemeral sculpture and temporary installation, I seek balances between juxtaposed elements: a force which wants to expand and a structure's form which constrains it. I often question the concrete parameters of sculpture, such as weight, stability, monumentality and permanence. I investigate the softness, the fragility of new materials and their reactions to gravity. Water and air do not always behave as we expect them to, therefore the installations are often subject to substantial change.

I am interested in many aspects of our contemporaneity, particularly environmental issues and women’s roles in society; I am very suspicious indeed about information delivered on such themes during the education system’s process. If information is being contained and manipulated to conform to a given framework, why should I refer my practice to a particular kind of narrative? The more an issue becomes popular the more I become sceptical. I choose to investigate its scope through elements that I can directly observe.

2. How do you feel about being Shortlisted for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019?

I am very excited about being shortlisted for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019. I moved to London in August, wondering how my work would be perceived here. The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019 immediately attracted me as an opportunity to show my work to a broad jury and I perceived it as an invaluable opportunity for professional feedback on the submission. I enjoyed the Instagram posts, so decided to apply. It was great news to find that I have been selected!

3. Do you have any tips or things that you’ve found useful when applying to prizes that your peers may benefit from knowing?

I personally think about prizes as a chance to re-evalute a group or piece of work, or as a stimulus to produce something new. I would recommend adopting clear methods of classification in order to keep documentation of your artworks, cv and photographs updated.

4. Where would you like your practice/career to be in 5 years’ time?

I believe I shall always continue to work with sculpture and installation; these are practices which help me to comprehend the world around me. For me an important part of an artist's role is to feel for the fundamental needs of their community, and propose a view of them. Judging from my formative experiences in Italy, we, as artists, need to move beyond thinking as individuals and start to organize spaces to share and collaborate with colleagues and other members of the community.

While working between Italy, Germany, and England I gathered creative resources from a variety of artists, critics and art directors as well as historians, natural scientists and members of the 'general public'. I would love to realize a mobile platform to serve as a space to debate, create and share different kinds of knowledge.

I hope to be able to follow up my ideas with enough independence to explore the new directions that emerge, through my approaching MA course at the RCA in which I am interested to explore the production of renewable energy and alternative ways of sustainable living in general.

5. If you could change one thing about the art world what would it be?

Invest more in involving the community in order to dissolve the gap between “Arts' people” and “Normal people”/outsiders. So I would encourage Art institutions to open new grants and opportunities for students who are in the most vulnerable situations, at every age.

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Highly Commended Artist 2019: Noga Shatz

1. Tell us a little bit about your practice – what medium do you use and why? What ideas do you explore? 

In my practice, I work with painting, printmaking, drawing and collage. In my recent work I have been using Monotype printmaking as my main technique. The direct and immediate transfer of the applied image, and the mirroring nature of this technique, serves as a vessel for exploration of ideas and images originating from my own personal experiences as an artist living in a foreign culture. Through an autobiographical perspective, I try to shed light and explore wider environments controlled by notions of loss and alienation.
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2. How do you feel about being Shortlisted and selected as Highly Commended for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019?

I am very excited to be shortlisted for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019. I feel honored that my work was chosen from such a large variety of great artists &artworks.

3. Do you have any tips or things that you’ve found useful when applying to prizes that your peers may benefit from knowing?

My tip for my peers would be: ** don’t give up even if you think it’s impossible, and that the odds are against you. You may be surprised.

4. Where would you like your practice/career to be in 5 years’ time?

In 5 years’ time I would like to be an established artist in the UK: to exhibit my work in galleries reaching larger audiences in the UK and internationally, and to continue practicing Art as a way of living on this planet.  I would like to collaborate with other artists, to inspire and be inspired by my peers.
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5. If you could change one thing about the Emerging Art World what would it be?

I would like to have more solidarity between artists and stronger social bonds between different practitioners in the art world.

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You can see more at www.artprize.co.uk/winners-2019