The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize Judging Panel is a selection of highly respected and renowned individuals in the art world, who cover a wide range of viewpoints and varied tastes for all movements, mediums and types of fine art.

In the latest of a series of interviews, we ask our judge Dr David Bellingham the questions many artists have asked us as well as some that will help us get to know him better and some insight into his roles in the art world as art historian and art business expert.

​If you have any new questions, feel free to comment below...

​Q1: Tell us about your pathway into the Arts?
My early background lacked any cultural capital so I found strange art and languages exotic and seductive.  I fell for Latin language and everything about ancient Rome when at school and my father took me to Rome and Pompeii when I was 12.  At that age I couldn’t stand anything Renaissance or Baroque, and modern and contemporary art was very much hidden from the wider public.  I found myself with a degree in Latin with Classical Archaeology and researching ancient Pompeian wall-paintings for my PHD.  This was partly a study of the site-specificity of fresco paintings designed to remain in a particular room, and my discoveries led me away from written language towards visual culture.  I lectured in Classical Studies and then moved to Sotheby’s Institute where, as Programme Director of the MA in Art Business, I have learnt to engage with art from every period and nation.  On the programme we visit a lot of emerging galleries and this has allowed me to develop an awareness in cutting-edge artistic practice as well as what galleries are looking for in emerging artists.  I also get a lot of input from what my students like in art, and they are the future advisors, dealers and collectors of art.

Q2: Do you have a favourite art movement or style?  My early research interests in the fixed and site-specific nature of wall-paintings have remained with me.
I find art galleries generally dull, unexciting and overcrowded, and prefer the dynamics of seeing art as related by the artist to its immediate environmental contexts of space, light and intention.  That means art in churches, banks, hospitals and town-halls, as well as in the streets of Camden, Shoreditch and Belleville (Paris).  In the past five years or so, the art market has been driven by fashions in cross-collecting so I really no longer care much for a particular style or movement, just the way the artist responds with sensitivity and intelligence to the immediate environment, as well as the way the most switched-on curators and collectors create synchronic displays reflecting current socio-political interests in globalisation, sustainability, inclusivity and diversity.
 
Q3: What are your values within the arts – why do what you do and what do you wish to champion and develop within the art world?
My Art Business lectures, seminars, visits and publications tend to focus on the ethics of artistic production, reception and the art market.  I hope that my students will take those ethical values into their work in both the commercial and public sectors of the art world.  I do not think that public money necessarily creates the most exciting, relevant and enduring art but I also realise that the art market is untransparent and unregulated and tends to favour a very small number of commercially ‘successful’ artists.  I am still hoping for a truly global art world, but its millennial development has recently been reversed by nationalist politics – hopefully this is a temporary blip.
 
Q4: What do you appreciate or look for in an artist with potential?
That is a very difficult question as I encourage my students to rediscover the initial gut-reaction to art which is often knocked out of them by orthodox art history teaching.  However, I also recognise that this is a narrow-minded strategy because a lot of emerging artists do not like to wear their hearts on their sleeves; I sometimes need to look twice and keep looking for the conversation between the art work and myself to start developing – those kinds of unspoken clumsy dialogues with art can be as rewarding as the more immediately engaging works.  The danger in the art market is that the ‘wow-factor’ works often gain more exposure because of their more immediate commercial appeal. 
 
Anyway, if you really want a direct answer to this question, then the main thing I respond to is ambiguity in terms of content as well as style: that quality will often mean that the artist is always on the edge of decision-making throughout the conception and creation of the work, and I find that exciting to experience. I do not think that the viewer is passive but needs to engage in the conversation begun by the artist in the work in front of them.
 
Q5: What do you hope to see in submissions to the art prize?   Variety and novelty – I see too many works which are technically admirable but which have nothing new to say within the broader cultural context.  There is little potential for conversation and discourse with the viewer in such work.
 
Q6: What has been your favourite project to work on and why?
My primary love is writing and communicating with my students as I see in them the future of a brighter art world.  However, the art prize is also very special to me because I see the work of emerging artists who are already beginning to shine light on that world.
 
Q7: If there is one piece of advice you would give those thinking of submitting work to the art prize what would it be?
Always hold on to sincerity and integrity towards conception, creation and fulfilment of your visions.  Don’t lose sight of the world outside yourself.  Go and look at as much art as possible, not just that validated by public sector galleries like the Serpentine and Whitechapel, but also in emerging galleries in fringe areas of London and other art cities.  Speak to emerging art dealers to understand what they are looking for as they are often the mediators between you and potential collectors of your work.  Look at the strategies of street artists as those guys are really out there trying to get noticed by the non-artsy public!

The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize Judging Panel is a selection of highly respected and renowned individuals in the art world, who cover a wide range of viewpoints and varied tastes for all movements, mediums and types of fine art.

In the latest of a series of interviews, we ask guest judge Magnus Brooke, Director at ITV plc, the questions many artists have asked us as well as some that will help us get to know her better and some insight into his involvement in the arts.

​If you have any new questions, feel free to comment below...

Q1: Tell us about where your passion for the visual arts came from? 
I can probably trace it back to being dragged around churches in Italy by my parents when I was young.  At some stage I stopped hating it and learned to love it.  Although I didn't study art history at University, I loved the Fitzwilliam and Kettles Yard in Cambridge and in my final year borrowed a contemporary painting from Kettles Yard to hang in my room.   I lugged the very large picture back from the gallery and was astonished at their level of trust in me.  
 
Q2: Are there particular styles or genres you are drawn to? 
I love painting, but also appreciate photography too.  I still find it very thrilling to see how painters can transform a bare two dimensional canvas into something fascinating, beautiful and sometimes controversial. I've always been drawn to the romantic in art and love to find contemporary expressions of romanticism in all media.
 
Q3: What artists or exhibitions have caught your eye in recent months?
I was blown away by the Frank Bowling exhibition at Tate Britain -- quite a mystery how he has remained so under the radar. I also loved rediscovering the Valenciennes oil sketches in deserted rooms in the Louvre recently.
 
Q6: As the judge what are you looking forward to seeing in entrant’s applications?
Confidence and the ability to say something striking and distinctive.
 
Q7: If there is one piece of advice you would give those thinking of submitting work what would it be?
Do it – nothing ventured, nothing gained!   And consider that the initial sifting will be made online.   

The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize Judging Panel is a selection of highly respected and renowned individuals in the art world, who cover a wide range of viewpoints and varied tastes for all movements, mediums and types of fine art.

In the latest of a series of interviews, we ask guest judge Melanie Lenz the questions many artists have asked us as well as some that will help us get to know her better and some insight into her role at the V&A as curator.

​If you have any new questions, feel free to comment below...

Q1: Tell us about your pathway into the Arts? 
My first real insight into the arts sector was in the early 2000s when I lived and worked in rural Japan. Whilst there I volunteered at an arts and cultural heritage site that ran an artist residency programme. I then decided to return to the UK and completed an MA in Museum Studies. Since then I’ve worked at several national museums and art galleries across the country in a variety of roles including education, exhibition management and curatorial. Many of the projects I’ve worked on have entailed collaborating with creative technologists.
 
Q2: What are your values within the arts – why do what you do and what do you wish to champion and develop within the art world? 
I value creativity, experimentation, craftmanship and intellectual rigour.
I love the variety of my work. I’m privileged to work with a national collection, and I am responsible for researching and developing the V&A’s digital art holdings. The arts sector is changing but many institutions lack the expertise to fully embrace, whether that be collecting or displaying, art that uses creative technologies. My role is to champion these artistic practices. I’m also a champion of diversity and I encourage people from a multitude of backgrounds to consider an arts career.
 
Q3: Tell us what you have been working on most recently?
I’m currently working on an exhibition I co-curated called Change and Control: Art in the Age of Computers. The show was on display at the V&A in 2018 and is currently touring the UK. It is presently at FirstSite gallery in Colchester where the rehang has been devised by an algorithm. I’m also working on a book about colour and I’ve just finished filming a piece for a documentary about the V&A’s digital art collection.
 
Q4: Where does your interest in digital art stem from?
In 2006 I worked in a gallery in Nottingham where I participated in talks exploring the impact of a new public commission by Rafael Lorenzo Hemmer, an established electronic artist who develops interactive installations that are at the intersection of architecture and performance art. I was really interested in the different logistical challenges of mounting a large-scale interactive piece and it led me to explore the dynamic new ways in which artists work with digital technologies.
 
Q5: What artists or projects have really caught your eye in recent months?
Lately I’ve been working closely with the London based artist Fabio Lattanzi Antinori. He uses a multitude of mediums including print, sculpture and interactive installation to create socio-political artwork. Often utilizing raw data to create layers of symbols and meanings, his work explores the language and control of corporate systems and its effects on individual belief systems.  Fabio’s work is part of the V&A’s collection and we’ve been thinking about the best way to conserve it.
I’m also a juror for the Lumen Art Prize and I recently presented an award to Sougwen Chung for her artwork Drawing Operations, a performance centred on a drawing collaboration between human and machine. Sougwen’s multidisciplinary practice pushes the boundaries between tradition and innovation and I think her critical practice is compelling.
 
Q6: As the judge on our new media award what are you looking forward to seeing in entrant’s applications?
I’m really looking forward to seeing a wide variety of imaginative work. I’m interested in seeing skilful works that have strong concepts and that utilise new media in meaningful and creative ways.
 
Q7: If there is one piece of advice you would give those thinking of submitting work to the new media award what would it be?
Sometimes artists struggle with labels to define their practice so I would stress that new media is an inclusive term.  Outstanding work always shines through so I would encourage anyone thinking about submitting work to this award to go for it!

​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. 

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. 

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.

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?
​
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. 

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. 

​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

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. 

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.

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.

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

This year we partnered with Fujifilm to support the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize in launching our very first Photography Award. In addition to the awards we also offer free career development talks open to all artist – not just entrants – and recently we were pleased to organise a talk hosted at Genesis Imaging looking at reproducing work as limited edition prints.

Led by the prize’s photography judges – Genesis Imaging's Creative Director Mark Foxwell and independent art adviser and photography expert Averil Curci – the talk guided attendees through how to format a digital file, select the materials and processes that will produce the best version of your work, discussed the importance of archival materials and look at best practice with editioning work, producing certificates of authenticity and presenting your work for sale. Read on to hear the expert’s top tips!

What are the main things artists and photographers need to consider before looking at producing prints of their work?

Mark: There are a few main points really:
Photographing your work: If you are an artist then capturing digital copies of your work well is really important. If you’re competent with a digital camera you could do this yourself but it may be advisable to work with a professional photographer to capture your work – there are people that specialise in this! This is a service we offer at Genesis too, so you can always ask if it’s possible for us to do this for your work. If you have work which has a lot of texture in it, it may be worth looking at getting the pieces scanned, using a Cruse Scanner (there are companies in London and further afield who offer this).

File preparation: If you are a photographer then you won’t need the above step, but both photographers and artists alike can benefit from prepping their file correctly for print. Your work will of course still need some formatting by specialised technicians, but the more we can improve the chances that what we print looks as much as you expect it. We therefore ask that clients do the following:
Add a border around the edges of the image if desired (sized appropriately)

Check the dimensions of the entire file (including a border if desired) are the same as the paper size you require your image to be produced on.

We recommend saving files as TIFFs – this avoids too much compression of the image – although we can also accept Jpegs, PDFs and other types of file. TIFF files need to be flattened and 8 bit.

To avoid compression, use a file transfer protocol such as Wetransfer rather than emailing files. You can also use the file upload capability on our website.

Materials and processes: It’s a good idea if you’re not sure which media to print on for you to book in and speak to a technician who will be able to take on board what you want to create and advise on the best materials and processes. Our most popular ones for editioned prints for photographers are Lambda C Type prints and for artists inkjet prints (also called giclée) but we offer a whole range of different options! We’ve even printed direct to medias such as aluminium or dibond, and more unusual things like slate or cow hide!

Testing: Make sure you ask for tests, and review them! You’ll be able to offer feedback to the technician on what needs adjusting to get your work looking exactly as you expect. We do these with every client initially. When we have approved test to work from, it’s easier for all!
How do you choose the best materials to print on?

Mark: Consider the purpose of those prints. For example, you may wish to explore more creative options for an exhibition like a wallpaper print for example, but for a limited edition print you want to sell to a client you may want to produce work more traditionally and present it as a c-type print in a standard museum-quality frame.

What does archival really mean and why is it important?

Mark: Just remember that the archival nature of finished print relies on the conditions the print is kept in. As soon as you add in elements like moisture or heat, direct sunlight (what if your collector puts the work above a radiator for example!), the life of the print is affected. Try not to worry too much about the archival properties, most fine-art level printing will be archival, and you can advise collectors on after-care.

Are some processes better than others for producing editions of work? How can I make sure every edition is the same if printed at different times?

Mark: Often editions are produced as traditional paper prints, but you’re not necessarily limited to this as fine art printing has advanced to include a range of non-paper options. Make sure to always keep an artist proof as reference of the outcome, so you always have a physical reference point for further prints. Don’t worry too much about prints looking slightly different from each other (within reason) – artists styles change over time so as a photographer it’s fine for your work to change also. The important thing is each time you are happy with the print.

How do you edition work correctly? How many? What if it sells out?

Averil: Editioning is a relatively new phenomenon in photography that only began being used on a wider scale in the 1960s and 70s. Prior to that, photographs were produced as open editions, sometimes numbered but not limited. Now the practice has been adopted enthusiastically by photographers. It is a way of limiting your work for sale, a kind of marketing tool used to give value and grow demand. It relies on the fact that scarcity is important.  My top tips on editioning are as follows:

There are no hard and fast rules but once a particular series has established a limited edition, it is immensely important you stick to it throughout that series. Editions typically range from 3 to 50.
Think carefully about the different sizes you wish to offer. I advise 1-3 different sizes overall. This breakdown is used by many photographers: 6 large, 10 medium and 20-25 small in each run.
Make sure to create an inventory of all your editions. Number, size, buyers’ locations, name and address, exhibition it’s appeared in, press received, awards, basically the most comprehensive record keeping you can. Consider backing this document up to the cloud so you’ll always have a back-up and can access from anywhere.

Artist Proofs: 1 -2 prints, 2 more standard, definitely the norm. Originally it was a proof the artist kept to match any other prints made.

Should I mark the prints with the number, if yes where and how:

Averil: There are some fairly standard practices around this:

Every print you produce should be signed and editioned either the on the front or back side of the print. Mostly due to framing and often the need for mounting, it is usually advised to sign and edition a label that is stuck to the back of the piece. Include title, date, edition number and signature.
Make sure to use an archival pen – there are certain brands that will be marked archival or use a pencil. Make sure to use the same materials and layouts for all of the editions. If using a label, it looks very professional to have a branded header.

How can I begin to work out pricing of my editions:

Averil: Firstly really do your research and see where the industry is at also consider:

Tier the edition. If you have an edition of 20 break it up into 5s with 4 different price levels, that increase as the edition sells. Clients can find this a draw as it means getting in early assures them a more attractive price. Inversely towards the end of the edition, there are very few works available which makes them more precious.

Look at your costs. Look at the amount of time the work has taken, overheads, production costs of materials and framing if relevant. Also look at what the edition run as a total will generate revenue-wise if it sells.

If you’re in the position to seek advice from galleries on pricing do, they can help advise from their experience of sales. See what the peers you’d like to sit alongside are charging as a market guide.

Avoid going down in price but aim to increase the price as an edition sells. Don’t worry about starting with lower prices, they can grow with you and it can be helpful to start lower while you build your profile. As your career and market grow, you can always consider raising your prices.

Usually your Artist Proof prints will sell for the highest amount and are the last prints to sell.
Make sure you are very transparent from the beginning, if you intend to do 3 different sizes and 30 editions overall make this clear so your buyers know how limited their work is. Avoid announcing new sizes later down the line, it’s not good practice.

Mark also adds: Artists who I work with often multiple their production costs by 3 to work out what to charge and remember if you’re selling through a gallery to add their percentage on top of what you would like to make.

Wait, what is an Artist Proof print?

Averil: An Artist Proof was traditionally the first 1-2 prints to come off of a run and be correct to the artist’s desire and act as a reference when making further prints. Nowadays it’s a slightly more collectable edition that the artist may still use as reference or may keep to sell off last at the highest prices.

General things to consider with your Artist Proofs:
Generally, you’ll do 1-2 per print run.
If you’re worried you can keep an artist proof so you have as a physical reference point if you don’t print your whole edition in one go, but remember you’re not going to show two of the same works next to each other and developments in printing mean there will be slight differences to printings each time, try not to worry too much about this.
When editioning the artwork either on print, label or certificate, always list the APs, for example 1/10 + 2 APs. Be transparent from the beginning.

I’ve started to sell a few of my editions, anything I should consider?

Averil: For particularly significant and popular works I strongly advise to hold back 2 or 3 editions from a run, potentially both an edition and an AP. In this way if down the road you are approached by a museum or important collector, you can have access to the work. If collaborating as a duo, both artists should sign the work.

Do my editions need a certificate of authenticity and what information should I put on that?

Averil: A certificate of authenticity is not a legal requirement but it does give buyers confidence and helps with establishing provenance. It provides another way for you to be as transparent as possible with what you are offering. The certificate is an A4 document on headed paper that include as much as possible. Name, title of work, year of production, (year print was made if applicable), medium, size, edition size and APs. If framed it can be helpful to list framing specs. Last but not least your signature.

It can be helpful to add some care instructions to remind the collector to keep work away from heat, direct sunlight, humidity etc. This will help you guide your collector as best you can on how to make sure their photograph lasts. Also try to add a small jpeg of the artwork. Often times, once you are represented by a gallery, they might want to take care of this aspect.

What should I consider with presentation of my work?

Averil: Once the artwork is created it is integral to also consider that it must become a whole object. It’s an important part of the artwork itself:

Work hard to find what works for your pieces. Research by going to galleries, fairs and exhibitions, speak to places like Genesis and ask for advice – take note of what you like.
Make test prints to help understand what size may best suit your work, live with these a bit and see how you feel looking at them over time.
If you can, use archival framing, UV glasses etc to fully protect the work. Make sure you weigh up what you are charging for the work versus how high end the presentation is.
You can sell unframed prints but it’s nice to have some control over the archival nature of the finishing and make sure that it’s framed properly. The final piece is an extension of your practice and it must represent you fairly.

Judith Van Linden is the Product and Marketing Manager for Photographic Paper at our supporters Fujifilm. Judith looks at the global market for trends and changes and is working towards finding suitable papers for the future. 
 
What are the main things artists and photographers need to consider before looking at producing prints of their work?  
Judith: When thinking about creating prints it we always recommend talking to your preferred lab and its technicians. They can talk you through all the necessary steps before sending the file and give you guidance on what kind of material the end product would suit.
When you create your photograph or artwork you’ll likely already have a vision and purpose for what you wish to do with it. In my opinion it would be good to see what kind of applications you want to use it for and for what goal. For example; portfolio, exhibition, limited edition print, special occasions etc, are all valid reasons to create a print however all vary slightly in how they will be used. The local labs can help you with creatively producing a stunning print using the best papers and materials for the end goal.
 
How do you choose the best materials to print on?
Judith:  Depending on the above goal there are numerous types of photographic paper for you to choose from. Again, in my opinion the professional labs are your best go to for guidance. If you want to familiarise yourself before going to a lab it would be good to look at our website (www.originalphotopaper.com).
Each photographic paper has its unique features. For instance, our Velvet paper is a beautiful deep matte paper with no reflection at all, with soft tones and touch, this lends itself very well to reproductions of mediums like painting. Our Professional Maxima paper on the other hand creates rich and vibrant colours and stunning deep blacks. And our Flex material is a stunning super high gloss and smooth product which works beautifully with photography. I can talk forever about paper and products...! When you are deciding between paper types it would be best to ask for a test print at the lab to see which paper fits best. 

What does archival really mean and why is it important?
Judith: Archival is a way of looking how long a print will last. This is one item which is important for all paper manufacturers (it's a major feature of all of our print emulsion research). We all want the paper last as long as possible. However, this is not easily explained or calculated, there are many elements which interfere with the longevity such as environment and varying light strengths. Having a print next to a window with direct sunlight is much more likely to cause some deterioration than having a print in a hallway without direct sunlight, prints in a cooled storage and dark environment will last much longer. Even the types of light you have in your home / gallery has impact on calculating a longevity.
There are many ways to ensure your print will last longer, by good aftercare and talking to the labs who can add museum type glass for instance.
 
How can I make sure every edition is the same if printed at different times? 
Judith: With photographic paper it is ''easy'' to create a number of matching editions, the beauty of these papers is they are very stable through production and when the processes stays the same you can more easily create the same print again and again with exactly the same features as the original. Of course, keeping in mind to use the same paper type because every photo paper has its own features.

The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize, now in its fifth year, is open to artists of all ages and backgrounds, whether student, graduate, part-time or full-time, and has become an international competition. The below 30 artists were selected by our Judging panel of experts (we deem them this for their expertise as well as their career successes to date within the art world and you can learn more about them here) and show great emerging talent in both ideas and technique. These entrants present an example of artists whose practices we feel will break through the industry with the right drive and support now.
 
Prevalent themes in this year’s shortlisted artists are representative of the wider idea’s entrants were exploring through their submissions around the current age of the Anthropocene and the man-made and natural worlds, to the exploration of the body, identity and how this is affected by the current cultural climate. Within the 2019 shortlist itself work explores sense of self within a personal and universal context, questions diversity and stereotyped representation of minorities and looks at people's relationship to both domestic and commercial settings.
 
We’re incredibly proud to work with these artists over their year as a shortlisted or winning artist with the prize but our support doesn’t stop there, we are very much focused on supporting all those who enter the prize or join our community and we commit to doing this by offering feedback on every entrant who submits early, offering free career development talks open to entrants and non-entrants alike and a comprehensive blog giving insight into how to navigate prizes and the wider art world, to attract opportunities and projects.
 
Please do read on, engage with this year's Shortlisted Artists, support them with your constructive feedback and help us create a community that is driven to developing the Self Represented level of the art industry at a time when it has never been more viable to do so!

Alessandra Bettolo is an Italian-born and London-based architect, designer and painter.
Her practice is concerned with exploring the harm society causes by dividing people according to artificial constraints of colour, ethnicity, gender, geography, religion and politics. Through her paintings she aims to break down stereotypes and challenge discrimination through reframing her subjects.

See more at ​www.krop.com/alessandrabettolo

Born in Bologna and based in the UK, Alessandra Brown explores notions of lost identity through her photographic practice. She works with objects that contain a sense of fragility and the ideas she explores evolve as they are being transformed by time and space. This shift in context allows the artist to see beyond their original meaning and re-appropriate them to create her own ‘histories’.

See more at www.alessandrabrown.com

Originally from Pakistan, Amber Arifeen works between London and Karachi and has an MA in Painting from Wimbledon College of Arts. Through her mixed media practice Amber recalibrates the ways of seeing and being eastern and female using portraiture of females as a way of contextualising the female experience through patterns, objects and imagery. Drawing on ideas about embodiment, spaces and identity, Amber's practice seeks to challenge regimes of representation and instead offers to re-examine Asian female subjectivity and spectatorship by presenting her subjects through a new lens, one that does not sit within the male or postcolonial gaze.

See more at www.amberarifeen.com

Photographic artist Amelia Lancaster is based in London and originally trained in architecture and set design before becoming an artist. She is interested in Brutalist architecture and Modernist housing estates and more recently – through a residency on the South Kilburn Estate - has been documenting the regeneration of this area. Her shortlisted work records the demolition of this place in a way that gives reverence to lived experience within the properties and creates a memory of the community before urban transformation. Layers of the block are stripped away revealing traces of past lives. The starkness, scale and perspective create an impression of a decaying cellular structure reflecting the end of an era.

See more at www.amelialancaster.com

Painter Anna Kenneally studied her degree in Fine Art in Bath Spa University.  Her practice explores love, death, beauty and tragedy. Taking references from mythology, history painting, folklore and also current issues, the paintings become tarot-like symbols for their subject or emotion. Using the idea of the artist as the subject her paintings allow muse and maker to become one and to uncover the many faces of the artist; from historic depictions of the tortured or the suffering artist, to the more bohemian and romantic idea we have of creative people. She reinvents existing subjects, to form a hybrid between the historical and the contemporary.

See more at www.annakenneally.com

Anna Perach is originally from the Ukraine and is currently completing her MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths. Anna’s practice draws on experiences and memories of Soviet domestic environment and their encounter with Israeli culture. She explores how immigration and cultural transitions influence the formation of one’s sense of self in relation to family, community and heritage. She is interested in examining the role of the ‘other’ as it’s defined by one’s community as well as a subjective experience. Her sculptural work integrates these ideas and explores the domestic space as an extension of the self where otherness is performed through mundane rituals and decor.

See more www.annaperach.com 

Currently completing her BA in Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School, London based oil painter Anna Stevenson is an artist working in abstraction inspired by the urban landscape. In abstaining from the figure Anna instead depicts their presence through their creations and habitat, through a process of layering and rearranging the landscape Anna aims to transform the mystical ambience found in the city to the visual, aiming to unlock the psyche of the human presence in its environment. Ultimately her canvas becomes a map and reflection of this process of understanding, the canvas becoming a documentation of her journey as opposed to an endpoint in itself.
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In addition to her studies, she is a current member of the young artist collective 'In the Studio' organised by the Mall Galleries, with whom she will be exhibiting later this year.

See more at www.annastevensonart.com

California-based photographer Brendon Kahn’s work explores today’s reality, guided by competition alongside the fierce longing to ascend into what many call paradise. What lies in this pursuit are strangely manufactured channels of both sincerity and unsettling moments that make us question our ultimate wishes. These uncomfortable forms of excess, desire and hope to live forever, tie us together but also create further separation than ever before in this consummate dance to the finish line. Working the medium of photography enables him to unify a world of opposition where tension is unconsciously programmed.

See more at www.brendonkahn.com



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British artist Chris Shaw Hughes has completed both a BA and an MA in Fine Art at the University of Brighton. Through painstakingly crafted paintings and drawings, Chris documents important geographical terrains and significant historical snapshots that are at once both visually arresting and thought provoking. His highly detailed work captures moments of tension that are often overexposed in the news and asks us to reflect on their meaning in greater depth. Currently his practice is heavily engaged with methods of mechanical reproduction - using both photography and carbon paper.

See more at www.chris-shaw-hughes.com

Chinese artist Chuanzi Huang is currently completing her MA in Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Arts. Her painting practice revolves around the way subjects exist in different social-cultural contexts. She is interested in current changes in contemporary society and the increasing speed with which these occur, which have forced human beings to adjust psychologically in a much shorter time.

Edward Murray is currently completing his part time MA at Norwich University. His sculptural practice seeks to represent the transient nature of reality. Materials which we consider as waste products, plastic bags and cardboard used briefly then discarded, form sculptural objects. These abstract, architectonic forms, poised precariously on tentative legs, perhaps technologically complex creations of our time, a testament to genius and fragility. The potential for these forms to be enshrined in bronze, preserved and made sacred for perpetuity, opens the door to the question of the validity of the quest for permanence, the attempt to fix a moment in time, to find solace in the restless, transient ephemera of existence.

Elliot Nehra is in his second year of a BA in Fine Art at the University of Brighton, he was shortlisted for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize in 2018 and has now had his new work selected again. His paintings depict a fabricated space that is at once surreal and perfectly ordinary. The everyday inspires the work; the paintings materialise as an instinctive response to the world, commenting on Nehra’s life, experiences, feelings, memories and background. The multifaceted, complicated nature of masculinity, of being and becoming a man is explored. Nehra creates a reality that he and the viewer can get lost in, where paint is celebrated, and colour is enjoyed. The viewer is invited to step into the ambiguous scenes and question the significance of the simple objects he depicts which are loaded with iconography and metaphor.

See more at www.elliotnehra.co.uk

Originally from Ireland Elva is currently studying for her MA in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art. Conceptually driven, her practice examines the role of mathematics and abstraction in contextualising and re-contextualising an understanding of who and where we are, social science concerns, repeating patterns and of aesthetics. Her current work explores the political, sociological and emotional state of the nation of Britain.

To date Elva’s primary degree in Economics and analysis of data informs her practice. Analysis of numbers/data and formulae increasingly determines the manner in which many aspects of our lives are structured, managed, understood and valued.
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She presents layers of information, and through paint, colour, movement and video question what is pertinent, accurate or real. In a world where we are presented with an abundance of information in a multiplicity of contexts, she invites the viewer to ask themselves what really matters. 

See more at ​www.elvamulchrone.com

Digital nomads, the Brazilian artists Raquel Palis and Paulo Ramos collaborate to form the collective ‘Forevermore’. The duo use augmented reality as their medium to highlight discrepancies between the analog/real and virtual worlds, and observe what happens when these environments collide. The duo investigate how we are influenced by digital communication on a large-scale by pushing the boundaries of contemporary art, engaging demographics with innovative use of technology and empowering the public in order to get them exploring narratives beyond the digital.

See more at www.forevermoreac.ca

Russian artist Ilya Ivankin uses analogue photography as his medium and is interested in spiritual, psychological and social conflicts, influenced by philosophers Sartre and Meillassoux. He uses analogue methods to take ultimate control away from how he creates his works and encourage discussion around the intrinsic value of human subjectivity and imperfection.

See more at www.ilyaivankin.com

UK based sculptor John Williams is intrigued by the idea that we have a sense of self; a self based upon memories of the experiences of life. Simultaneously and distinct from that, a self that is able to observe thoughts from a separate, objective perspective.
 
His sculptures take the form of mute fragments of the physical body that encourage the viewer to complete the image. Strict classical Greek depiction of the ideal figure together with visual references to fossils, are competing aesthetics which fascinate John.
 
In a world that is preoccupied with the human condition John makes art that addresses the fundamental questions of who we are and why we are here, exploring the foundation of human essence and spirituality.

See more at www.johnwilliamssculpture.com

London-based artist and designer Kira Phoenix K’inan brings together fine art and craft by though her glass sculptures. Kira’s artwork explores the nature of drawing and how inter-twisting each line creates works that are in a constant visual flux.
 
While Kira was a Masters student at the Royal College of Art she explored traditional glass techniques and translated them into a contemporary series of glass sculptures. She developed a unique technique of low relief drawing, the Relief Drawing Technique, where she carved directly into a plaster sheet and cast the piece using fine ground glass.

See more at www.kpkinan.com

French painter Marie Lenclos is now based in London and uses the city as her inspiration. Marie’s oil paintings capture moments of light and order within the urban chaos. Often mundane or domestic, the landscapes or interiors she paints present themselves to her during her journey to or from work across South London.
 
She is interested in the angle, composition, set of colours and the way the lines fall of familiar architecture and scenes: a painting imposes itself in this moment.
 
The resulting works present a unique stillness in urban spaces and architecture. The paintings work like long exposure photographs, intensifying colours and removing traces of people and activity, allowing both artist and observer to contemplate the interplay of colour, light and form in the physical environments we inhabit.

See more at www.marielenclos.com

Matthew Mifsud was born in Luqa, Malta. He attended the University of Malta where he read Chemistry and Biology. After a brief stint working in the pharmaceutical industry, he moved to Edinburgh where he completed an MA in Creative Advertising before moving to London. His work in advertising heavily influences his current artistic style where he takes inspiration from architecture and plays with colour and the balance of light and dark to create his paintings.

Born in Paris, France, Nicolas Laborie is a London based Wet Plate Collodion artist and commercial photographer/videographer.
 
His photographic work is based on social commentary, human condition and gender equality using the Wet Plate Collodion process, mixing a 19th century photographic process and technique, with a contemporary subject.
 
His shortlisted series The Suffragettes: Millennial Rebels series are presented using Wet Plate Collodion photography, in collaboration with Milliner Claire Strickland who created all the hats for the series.
 
To celebrate the 100 years anniversary for the vote for women in UK - Representation of the People Act 1918 - Young millennial women were invited to pose and reflect on what the anniversary means to them. The young women, aged 16 to 20 years old are here represented as Suffragettes who fought for the right to vote for women in the UK.

See more at www.nicolaslaborie.com

Noa Pane was born in Rome and is based in London. Her current work often consists of sculptures and on-site installations, often working with recycled materials or using materials that can be found in ordinary workshops, like clamps, straps, and scaffolding, which return to their general use after the exhibition.
 
She often combines those materials with inflatable and fluid elements like air and water (essential factors of our environment that are often taken for granted), using things like bubbles and balloons as adaptable elements that can fill and react to their environment in different ways. These impermanent materials are both playful but can also disappear at any moment making them a 'tense' object, under internal and external pressure; you inflate it and you have to take care of it.

London based Israeli artist Noga Shatz is a mixed media visual artist working with painting, printmaking, drawing, collage and sound. She completed her MA in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2015.

Her practice deals with a body in a state of conflict. This body is both physical and metaphorical.

In her recent work Shatz has been creating mono-type prints; using the immediate transfer of the applied image, and the mirroring nature of this technique, she explores ideas and images originating from her personal experiences as an artist living in a foreign culture. Through an autobiographical perspective, she examines wider environments controlled by notions of loss and alienation.
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In her shortlisted series; ‘The Handkerchiefs’, she is depicting memories, then folding them back into themselves, transforming the 2-dimensional image into an object- a memento. Each handkerchief holds a memory of an actual physical place, depicted as she re-remembers it through the action of creating, which restore and reinvent new narratives.

See more at www.nogashatz.com

Painter and new media artist Roberto Grosso takes inspiration from music and produces his work on metal, metallic paper or Perspex. The key elements of his artworks 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.

See more at www.robertogrosso.com

​Ruth Brenner is a Scottish sculptor and installation artist living and working in Newcastle upon Tyne.  She is currently working on a practice led PhD combining a study of phenomenology and sculptural practice to research corporeality and the bodily acts of making.
 
Corporeality is the quality of being or having a material body, therefore Brenner’s work engages with: the physical and mental act of making, material exploration in relation to elemental materials, elemental processes and direct engagement with materials.  The influences of corporeality are central to her practice as the work has a direct association to her bodily dimensions; physical ability; sensory awareness and her relationship with the material.  Making is, therefore, inextricably linked with the outcome which is a visual record of cognitive processes.  When emotion, perception and material work together, they become one. 
 
In an attempt to close the gap between the theoretical and the practical, Brenner’s work aims to celebrate the immersive experience of using one’s hands to engage with the materials of the world whilst giving the embodied practice of making theoretical underpinning.

See more at www.ruthbrenner.co.uk

The Painter Sam Rachamin with Iraqi-American and Israeli roots, is based in Paris.
After growing up in very violent and militant circumstances in Israel he chose painting and art as a refuge. He believes that his gift is painting and that the way he can change this world for the best is by creating art and teaching others to paint. He is a figurative realistic painter that works from nature and the model. Sam uses versatile modern and old master techniques to create his paintings.

See more at www.sarahselby.co.uk

​Bristol based Sarah Selby is an interdisciplinary artist interested in creative applications of pervasive technology. Born at the intersection of the Millennials and 'iGeneration', her work is heavily inspired by her unique perspective on the rapid changes in technology and the societal impacts of this. She explores the relationship between the digital and physical through tangible objects that fuse our two worlds - exploring how they overlap, contradict and impact one another.
 
Sarah graduated from Interactive Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2017 and was awarded the MMU Science Community Award after being selected to participate in interdisciplinary residency 'Roche Continents'. She was also recently selected for Arebyte Gallery's 'Hotel Generation' programme.

See more at www.sarahselby.co.uk

Sophie Peters is a self-taught visual artist interested in the use of art in protecting human rights and disrupting societal assumptions (particularly regarding gender roles, power systems, consumerism and identity). She works primarily with paint, but also explores the use of mixed media, text and film. Sophie believes in the intersection of art with science and its involvement in everyday discourses. She was born in Minnesota but grew up in the south of England.

See more at www.sophiepetersartwork.com

After many years working as a teacher of deaf children, Susan recently completed an MA in Creative Practice at Leeds Arts University and now works as an experimental artist/printmaker. 
 
Her practice reflects a continuing interest in visual language and storytelling, her work is concerned with the temporal materiality of landscapes and the way that, over time, they are constantly in a state of flux; transformed and recast by human intervention. Printed imagery developed using discarded and eroding books, found within a local landscape, reveal a palimpsest of layers that are organic, temporal and physical, and which question the reality of the past, present and future. The vibrancy between object and environment creates tension as the fragile landscape seeks to assert itself above the increasingly overwhelming impact of humanity.

See more at www.suegrantwright.co.uk

Thomas Webb is a British born new media artist living in London, UK. His practice orbits around real time data and how it can be applied to reveal present contemporary life. Thomas produces works that are programmed using numerous server systems connected to real time data sources and social media. His work presents a fluid account of emotion defined by the millions of users it gathers information from.

See more at webb.site

Wu Ziwei is a new media contemporary artist from China currently studying an MA in Computational Arts at Goldsmiths. Her artworks are mainly based on biology, science and their influence in society. Wu uses a range of media like painting, installation, Audio-Visual, 2D and 3D animation, VR, mapping and so on.

See more at www.wuziwei.me

The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize Judging Panel is a selection of highly respected and renowned individuals in the art world, who cover a wide range of viewpoints and varied tastes for all movements, mediums and types of Fine Art.
 
In the latest of a series of interviews, we ask guest judge Averil Curci, the questions many artists have asked us. These including understanding what famous art and artists the judges like, more about the judges' expectations, their involvement in the art world, the exciting projects they are involved in and their own tips to help your career. If you have any new questions, feel free to comment below...

Averil is a London-based art advisor specialising in Photography. Her work focuses on acquisitions, sales and commissions for international private clients. She also mentors photographers providing creative direction, strategic and commercial advice. In Spring 2019 she will offer a programme of London Contemporary Art tours and studio visits.

Her keen eye comes from 15 of years of experience working in the art world - starting in New York where she was the director for Hamburg Kennedy Art Advisory & Projects, an established photography consultancy.  Following this, she became the director of Brancolini Grimaldi, a contemporary photography gallery born in Florence and Rome which expanded to London, Mayfair in 2011. There she worked closely with both emerging and established artists, curating exhibitions and art fairs, developing special projects, events and publications.

See more about Averil Curci at www.averilcurci.com

​Q1: Tell us about your pathway into the Arts? 
A1: Growing up between Rome and London allowed me to be incredibly immersed in and surrounded by art and architecture. After university in Boston I moved to New York. I wanted to begin a career in photography and knew that New York City would be one of the most dynamic and developed markets to begin on my path. New York has always maintained such a vibrant art scene championed by one of the most informed and discerning collector bases I have witnessed thus far.

Q2: What are your values within the arts – why do what you do and what do you wish to champion and develop within the art world? 
A2: Great artwork deserves to be seen and I am passionate about bringing it visibility, whether it be via an exhibition, a purchase, a studio visit, or even just making an introduction. Championing and sharing artistic talent and vision is one of the greatest elements of what I do.

Q3: Tell us what you have been working on most recently?
A3: I have been developing and growing my art advisory business where I assist private clients in building collections.  I am excited to be developing a new facet to the business. This spring I will begin offering a program of art tours around London’s contemporary gallery network. Visits to artists' studios will also be included as these can be such inspiring and enlightening places to witness.

Q4: Where does your interest in photography stem from?
A4: Photography has always gripped me from an early age: my father setting up a dark room in our spare room was certainly pivotal. Later, in my teenage years, I started to understand the power of the image and its multiple uses within our society. The directness and potential of the medium was greatly appealing and I became attracted to working with artists within a gallery context.

Q5: What photographers or projects have really caught your eye in recent months?
A5: Women in Photography: A History of British Trailblazers just opened at The Lighthouse in Surrey. I have yet to visit but this survey exhibition is of massive importance as it highlights the achievements of female photographers working in Britain from the mid-19th century through to today. From early innovators such as Anna Atkins to contemporary artists Helen Sear, Hannah Collins and Clare Strand.

Q6: As the judge on our new Photography Award what are you looking forward to seeing in entrant’s applications?
A6: An ability to understand and represent one’s personal aesthetic and how it sets them apart from the rest. It is therefore an astute ability to edit one's work and chose an entry that speaks honestly about their practice;  work that has the ability to make an emotional impact, and not purely for technical reasons.

Q7: If there is one piece of advice you would give those thinking of submitting work to the photography award what would it be?
A7: Many artists forget that beyond the quality of the work itself, the presentation of the object itself really makes a difference. This is an incredibly important element that must be well researched and thought through. One aims to achieve a harmony of sorts between image, paper, size and support. I suggest visiting galleries and art fairs for inspiration and also seeking professional help.

​Join our newsletter (click here) to be notified of the next issue of interviews with the judges as well as invites to our exclusive events for artists and news on the art prize.
 
Interview by Caitlin Smyth

The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize Judging Panel is a selection of highly respected and renowned individuals in the art world, who cover a wide range of viewpoints and varied tastes for all movements, mediums and types of Fine Art.
 
In the latest of a series of interviews, we ask guest judge Mark Foxwell, the questions many artists have asked us. These including understanding what famous art and artists the judges like, more about the judges' expectations, their involvement in the art world, the exciting projects they are involved in and their own tips to help your career. If you have any new questions, feel free to comment below...

Mark is the Creative Director of Genesis Imaging and has been a photographic printer for over 40 years. He has worked closely with both renowned and emerging photographers and artists. His prints have graced the walls of some of the top museums and galleries in the world, including MOMA and Tate Modern. He has been a guest lecturer at a number of London Universities and a portfolio reviewer for numerous platforms. He is consumed by photography as it is as much him as his DNA. His current aim and hope is to give back as much as he has gained from his passion. 

See more about Genesis Imaging at genesisimaging.co.uk 

​​Q1: Tell us about your pathway into the Arts? 
A1: Straight out of school I started an apprenticeship in printing at Vala Studios, the first lab in London to do Cibachrome prints direct from transparencies. After a couple of years, I moved over to the BBC in-house printing department
which was part of the graphics department. Here I worked on projects such as the title sequence for programmes and props. 40 years later, after working across many labs to hone my skills, and weathering the move from analogue to digital, I’m still printing for photographers all over the world. It’s my passion and my craft to be able to take a photographer’s image and translate it to a physical print.

Q2: What are your values within the arts – why do what you do and what do you wish to champion and develop within the art world? 
A2: Honesty when making work. We all start out imitating others, picking up elements we like from various artists and photographers and replicating it. But I think being able to support photographers in finding their true and honest voice, and their own style, is paramount to the creation of interesting, emotional work. We must ensure artists and photographers have the time and support to find this.

Q3: Tell us what you have been working on most recently?
A3: I’ve been working with the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography recently on a large scale exhibition called CIVILIZATION, which is currently on show at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea. It’s been great fun (and a challenge!) working with around 140 artists (and this is only a third of the show), it took 7 years to get to this point. At the other end of the scale I’ve been working on some fantastic student and recent graduate projects, it’s great to work with those at an emerging level and support their development. We support a lot of key events throughout the industry and in May 2018 we did a lot of work with Photo London (we’ve been the Print Partner for the fair since it began). It was really exciting to produce a colossal 5 x 3 metre wallpaper for Ed Burtinsky; the piece was the first interactive work I’d produced and came to life when an iPad was held up to sections of the work, with moving image. Great to watch visitors interact! 

​Q4: Where does your interest in photography stem from?
A4: My school’s Camera Club! I’d always been interested in design and I originally wanted to study Silversmithing at Camberwell. I decided to pursue photography as I could make a more stable living, although it certainly still relies mostly on passion! 

Q5: What photographers or projects have really caught your eye in recent months?
A5: On Abortion by Laia Abril is a project I’m very fond of (I have given away five copies of the book as gifts). It is thought provoking and an important social piece of work, the exhibition in Arles made me aware of her work and is a good example of photography and installation. Firecracker remains an organisation that I am passionate about supporting. It is a very good source of photographers in the photojournalist style. Genesis have been lucky to support their grant for emerging female photographers since it started, and it’s been great to watch their impact grow. 

Q6: As the judge on our new Photography Award what are you looking forward to seeing in entrant’s applications?
A6: Heart and soul. This may sound slightly intangible, but it’s evident in work, and I don’t need to understand your work completely as I will have my own preconceived ideas, which will colour my decisions on how I interpret a project. When you are expressing real, authentic emotion through your work it will always come through. Technical skill is not the be all and end all, submit the work you are really passionate about: it is part of the journey and will only add to your knowledge and growth of your practice as an artist.

Q7: If there is one piece of advice you would give those thinking of submitting work to the photography award what would it be?
A7: Make sure you’ve thought about the work beyond a digital file, if you want to exhibit a project you need to think about how you want that to look beyond the screen; what size do you want images to be printed? What substrate or paper do you think will work best with them? How will the installation affect what mounting and finishing works best? I spend a lot of time with clients at Genesis working these elements out, but if you can think about them prior it can really help. There are many options with producing photography nowadays, think about it as another integral part of your practice and not just a necessity to showing your work in a physical space. 

Join our newsletter (click here) to be notified of the next issue of interviews with the judges as well as invites to our exclusive events for artists and news on the art prize.
 
Interview by Caitlin Smyth

The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize Judging Panel is a selection of highly respected and renowned individuals in the art world, who cover a wide range of viewpoints and varied tastes for all movements, mediums and types of Fine Art.
 
In the latest of a series of interviews, we ask judge Howard Lewis, the questions many artists have asked us. These including understanding what famous art and artists the judges like, more about the judges' expectations, their involvement in the art world, the exciting projects they are involved in and their own tips to help your career. If you have any new questions, feel free to comment below...

​Director of the Schorr Collection, a collection of 400-plus artworks, predominantly Old Masters acquired over four decades. Howard currently spends his time managing the collection and the numerous long term loans to institutions in the UK, US and beyond, including the Bodleian Library at Oxford University and The Walker Gallery in Liverpool.

You can see more at www.schorrcollection.org.uk.

​Q1: Which artworks or media or movements are your favourites?
A1: Old Masters though there are some contemporary works that have caught my eye. Aspects of Surrealism. I think Paul Delvaux is an interesting artist (learn more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Delvaux).

Q2: What do you appreciate or look for in an artwork?
A2: Does it move me? You should be influenced by a combination of emotion, intellect and aesthetics.
 
Q3: If realism/traditional is 0 and abstract is 10, what number places your favourite artworks/type?
A3: Probably 2. I try to love abstract art but generally fail. There has been the odd exception, however.

​Q4: Which important/renowned artists are you interested by?
A4: Principally Old Masters. Artists I recommend you observe more closely include Rubens, El Greco and Giovanni Battista Moroni (learn more here: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/giovanni-battista-moroni ), all touched by genius in their own way. Also, explore early Flemish illuminated manuscripts, some of which are exquisite.

Q5: What do you appreciate or look for in an artist with potential?
A5: A singular voice. Artists should be communicators but all too often challenge the viewer in a rather ineffectual way.
 
Q6: Do you have one important piece of advice for emerging artists?
A6: My door is always open. Don't hesitate to ask me to visit your studio for a chat, a cup of tea and a plate of your finest custard creams! Keep the faith but don't be frightened to experiment outside your comfort zone. The results may surprise you.
 
Q7: What has been your favourite art project that you have been involved with?
A7: This has been the most enjoyable project, if only to hear the contrasting opinions of my fellow judges. There are some talented entrants this year which has assuredly enlivened the debate.
 
Q8: What plans and projects have you got for the year?
A8: Aside from supervising the Schorr Collection, I am mainly involved with OFFLINE of which I am founder and host. It brings together c 30 people for supper, all ages, all backgrounds, boys and girls. Check out www.offlineandon.com to gain a better insight as to where I am coming from and, indeed, where I may be going! 

​​The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019 Judging Panel is a selection of highly respected and renowned individuals in the art world, who cover a wide range of viewpoints and varied tastes for all movements, mediums and types of contemporary art.
 
We are proud to have Josh McNorton, Head of Programmes at Rich Mix London, East London's independent arts centre, join this year’s Judging Panel and will lead the selection for the New Media Award 2019. In this blog we ask him your questions so that you can get to know him and his work, as well as gain some advice and tips on the art world.

​About Josh McNorton

Josh is a creative producer, festival director, arts programmer and curator. Josh grew up in Canada and moved to the UK in 2012 to produce a large-scale, outdoor entertainment programme for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. From 2014 to 2016 Josh produced FutureFest, a festival in London about the future, for the UK innovation charity Nesta. Following FutureFest, Josh co-founded the world’s first festival of sensory arts and research, Open Senses, which debuted in London in May 2017. Since April 2018, Josh has been the Head of Programmes at Rich Mix, East London’s independent arts centre. Josh programmes and oversees the delivery of 400 shows and events per year across live music, theatre, dance, spoken word, comedy, festivals, family activities and exhibitions.

​Q1: Tell us about your pathway into the Arts? 
As a child I acted in community theatre productions and learned to play the piano. In the early 90s I was inspired by grunge music to pick up the electric guitar and write songs. In high school, out of necessity, I started organising gigs for my own and my friends’ bands, which lead me to doing the same at university, where I studied playwriting. Music and theatre have been integral parts of my life for as long as I can remember!

​Q2: What are your values within the arts – why do what you do and what do you wish to champion and develop within the art world? 
I’m obsessed with new, unexpected experiences and art is the best way to satisfy this obsession. Great art should shift my perspective, teach me something new, or showcase a world I haven’t been exposed to before. I’m in a job where I get to work with different artforms and established and emerging artists from all over the world and there are always new things to discover.
I want to champion artists who have been historically underrepresented and provide a stage for these artists to take risks, experiment, and progress their practices to unexpected places.
  
Q3: Tell us what you have been working on most recently
I’m the Head of Programmes at Rich Mix, an art centre in East London. My role involves programming and overseeing over 400 events per year across live music, theatre, dance, spoken word, comedy, festivals, family activities and exhibitions. This takes up the vast majority of my time!
 
Q4: Where does your interest in new media/digital art stem from?
Around the same time that I first became obsessed with music, I also discovered computers – coding, gaming, assembling hardware, recording software, etc. I’ve moved away from that level of interest, but I’m still fascinated with technology, particularly how it provides easy (and often free) access to creative tools. I’m always looking for artists who can utilise these tools to unearth something new.

Q5: Do you think your likes and dislikes, tastes in art, have changed over time? Do you have any examples?
Absolutely. My interests have broadened over time and I’m increasingly open-minded as to what constitutes art and which art affects me. For example, in the past few years I’ve become more interested in jazz and disco music; my teenaged self couldn’t stand either! Another example is audio storytelling -- radio plays, podcasts and audio books were not things I was exposed to growing up but, because of the internet, I can easily access those types of work, and I find it to be a really captivating medium.
 
Q6: As the judge who is leading our New Media Award selection process what are you looking forward to seeing?
Artists unafraid to take risks. Create something new, it doesn’t have to be polished!

Q7: If there is one piece of advice you would give those thinking of submitting work to the new media award what would it be?
My favourite piece of advice I’ve ever been given is: “options enslave, limitations liberate.” Work within the parameters set out for this award and use the constraints to your advantage. 

Join our newsletter (click here) to be notified of the next issue of interviews with the judges as well as invites to our exclusive events for artists and news on the art prize.

Interview by Caitlin Smyth

​ INTRO

Our first talk for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2019 took a look at the application process and what it means to both those who are filling them in and those who are receiving them.
 
We held a panel discussion chaired by our Marketing Director Caitlin to discuss this with previous entrants and our team.
 
We were so pleased to see some many familiar and new faces and be able to launch the prize, its new award (hyperlink award) and judges (hyperlink judges) so successfully!
 
SPEAKERS:
 
Loreal Prystaj https://www.lorealprystaj.com @lorealprystajphotography
 
Loreal, originally from New York, is in her final year of her Masters in photography at the Royal Academy of Arts London. Work from her Reflecting on Nature series was shortlisted for the Emerging Artist Prize in 2018. Since then Loreal has exhibited her Fibers of Beauty series at Recontres D’Arles – the oldest and arguably most reputable photography festival in the world. This series then went on to the Tokyo International Foto Awards in Tokyo and will tour further later this year. Earlier in the year she presented her book Between the Cracks at Offprint photobook fair at Tate Modern and she is currently working on a new body of work which she’ll be sharing in the near future.
 
Brad Kenny https://www.bradkennystudio.com @brad_kenny_studio 
 
Brad is from the UK. He was shortlisted for the Emerging Artist Prize in 2016 with one of his large scale abstract representation painting. Brad not long ago made the move to work full time as an artist. He has taught with Cass Art, been part of a number of group shows and just completed his third solo show (the last two shows were held at Cass Art Kingston and at Leatherhead Theatre, he organised and curated himself). Brad now has a fairly steady stream of commissions and sales and has a strong online following which you can check out via his Instagram handle above!
 
Conrad Carvalho - http://www.oaktreeandtiger.com @oaktreeandtiger 
Conrad is our Art Prize Director and Panel Chairman. He has worked with both individual artists as a mentor, supplied corporate art services, given art investment talks and organised exhibitions as well, of course, as guiding our art prize! His current show, Meridian Skylines with artist Caio Locke, is on at the Embassy of Brazil in London and then at HKS Architects for its second instalment.
 
 
PANEL DISCUSSION: 
 
1. Do you feel there have been any particularly significant opportunities or moments that you feel have been important to reaching where you currently are?
 
Loreal: I really felt I benefitted from a residency I did, it put me in an environment with my peers and allowed me to explore creativity with the support of a community in a very supportive way. It was very different to the experience I am having through my MA.
 
Brad: There have been many moments and things that have been significant in me progressing. From support from my parents, to the confidence boosts successfully entering opportunities has given me.
 
The digital community has been very significant to me in terms of building my audience and also securing some sales, it’s allowed me to keep putting myself out there even if I don’t have an exhibition or a new work on show. I also think going to events like talks or private views have allowed me to create some great connections with peers which have resulted in further progression with my art.
 
Conrad: The Art Prize was of course a very significant moment for me which has not only allowed me to develop what I do with Oaktree & Tiger but also has taught me (and continues to teach me) a lot about what the real needs are of emerging artists nowadays.
 
Over time attending events and making time to meet with people who I’ve perhaps just had an interesting initial conversation with that I’d like to continue has meant that slowly I’ve built a network with the right people and opportunities now sometimes come to me rather than me going to them. I’d definitely say don’t discount the ground work you do or underestimate how long an opportunity might take to come to fruition – I have lots of clients that I’ve spoken to for several years before they bought an artwork from me.
 
 
2. In terms of the opportunities you’ve applied for how do you decide which are the right ones to go for you?
 
Brad: Cost often comes into play, there have to either be extra benefits other than winning or losing or I do a lot of research to really work out if I may be the kind of artist they are looking for.
 
I am dyslexic and I have to say I often discount certain opportunities if the entry form is too long or they rely on the text, form after form of text is required and becomes more about the language you speak about the art piece, rather than the art work itself. If it’s too hard for me to complete the form easily and make it worth it, then I will tend to avoid the opportunity.
Loreal: I agree with Brad on his points. I’m also dyslexic and find the application process hard, I think because of that I’ve always tried to make sure I present my work well. I supply good images files and make sure I research the opportunity and what they are looking for. I also think having conversations – with organisers, with previous entrants, etc., is a great way to work out if an opportunity is one you want to engage with.
 
I’ve had a lot of failures, we all do, and it’s important to remember we all will continue to have a lot of failures but it is good to participate, to engage with the wider art world and be present where possible. I tend to have a budget for entering opportunities and stick with this to make sure if I don’t win something I haven’t eaten into my funds for other things.
 
3. Do you apply any kind of process to filling in applications or have any tips for your peers to make sure they are learning from the process of applying?
 
Brad: I print all my application forms out and keep them as reference points. Filling in application forms is a good way to try and be objective about your work and try to see it from a different view point. It can help you learn about where you are and re-engage with what you are interested in. I also think opportunities like awards, open calls etc help you learn about the wider art world which can be hard once you’ve left education or if you are self- taught, I always try to make sure I attend the events or engage with the social media irrespective of whether I’ve been successful or not.  
 
Loreal: I think applications really help you ask yourself questions. Like a personal crit. You can take a pause and really look at where you’re at that moment, why you’re doing it and what you’re interested in. They’ve always allowed me some self-reflection and helped me keep going. I also try to save my applications and think this is a good way to track how I am developing and I always try to make sure I am genuine with what I submit, I aim to find the right opportunities rather than change what I’m saying or producing to fit a certain opportunity. I think that authenticity is important to being able to keep going.
 
4. Conrad, what grabs your attention as the panel chairman?
 
Conrad: Good photos. If the work is well lit, there is nothing else in the images, these basics really help us get a good first impression.
 
If submitting more than one artwork and you’re working across varying styles or subject matter don’t be afraid to submit different types of work. We’re very aware as emerging artists you may well be still working out your voice so unlike some opportunities we don’t judge this as weakness. Also, keep in mind that we look at each artwork individually too, so you have more opportunities to be noticed by the judges.
 
Having all the text boxes filled in is really helpful – it helps us get a much more rounded view of your practice and gives us insight into you as the artist!
 
5. What extra things do you do (if any) during an application process to stay engaged with the opportunity?
 
Loreal: I wouldn’t say this is limited to the application process but I try to stay in touch with the opportunity, say thanks even if I don’t get it, congratulate winners, etc. It’s another potential relationship that might result in another opportunity later on (like this talk!)
 
Brad: I agree with Loreal, I also like to attend the events to support other emerging artists and if I really like or engage with another artists work I’ll post them on my social media – we have to support each other! Don’t be a sore loser, as it will close doors for you. Don’t become obsessive about the competition to the point it changes your art work!
 
 
 
6. To round us off, can you all summarise you top 3 advice points. 
 
Brad: 

• Applying gets you in front of people, remember it’s not all about winning or losing
• Do your research and make sure it’s the right opportunity for you.
• Be genuine, be enthusiastic, be gracious and stay involved!

 
Loreal: 

• Be open to learning about yourself while applying to things – take note of what you see and find.
• Stay curious, think about what your work means to a certain opportunity, why would they be interested in what you’re doing not just looking at it from what you can gain.
• Again, be genuine, don’t cater to the opportunity, be strong with how you choose to work and what you’re doing and choose the right opportunities for you – look beyond the obvious.

 
Conrad:

• Get offline, go to events, talks, private views etc. Word of mouth is powerful as are peer networks and support.
• Be discoverable – try as best you can to have a website, blog or post on social media. These are free tools where you can educate an audience about your work.
• Be friends with your peers! There is nothing more powerful than shared experience,  knowledge and opportunities. Don’t be afraid to meet with people just to talk and share thoughts, there doesn’t always have to be a clear agenda.

 
 
Q+A
 
1. How do you define what are good ideas behind and artwork? 
We don’t, but we hope you do! A strong understanding of your own art practice and confidence with what your submitting is all we look for. Don’t be afraid of it being simple and try to keep how you explain simple so that your ideas really hit home.
 
2. Is there such a thing as bad exposure? 
Probably but as an emerging artist you have to experiment and further down the line you can always be more selective in what you include on your CV. Also, things can be deleted from the internet, or forgotten!
 
3. Why do you look at artists social media? If they don’t have it does it count against them?We will often take a look at an artist’s social media further along in the judging process when we’re getting towards the long list. We look only to get a better understanding of where they’re at.
 
You are in no way in with less of a chance if you do not have social media and we have had plenty of shortlisted artists over the years without it! You may just get a phone call from us instead!
 
4. What are the parameters around nudity? 
This is a tricky one, mostly our parameters are set by the varying social media platforms we share artworks on. We have to be careful not to have works taken down, or at worst get ourselves shut down for a period of time.
 
In terms of what you are submitting we do ask that artists think about the exhibition space work is shown in if selected and the audience we engage with and use this to their best judgement. We’ve had works including a level of nudity previously so please don’t be too perturbed!
 
5. Does the physical size of a work affect what wins? 
No! We know there is a current trend for creating huge works, we’re in no way judging based on this. Plus, our walls do end eventually!
 
6. Does entering more works mean you have more of a chance of winning? 
One artwork is chosen to represent each Shortlisted Artist. So each artwork is considered on its own, and if you have a diverse practice or are still developing it and looking at different ideas and mediums, then it helps to show a wide range of artworks. But if entering 1 is what fits within your budget, just make sure you offer strong texts to back it up.
 
7. I suffer with dyspraxia/dyslexia, can I make that known via the entry form? 
This is a great point, currently we don’t but Caitlin is keenly working towards how we can support our artists working with disability and specific learning difficulties. It’s really easy for us (as an initial step) to add a box on our entry form where you can add anything you wish to make us aware of, so we are looking into doing that ASAP and please, keep talking to us about how we can support this!

Learn more about the prize by visiting www.artprize.co.uk

For our fifth year we are excited to announce a brand-new award with support from east London arts centre Rich Mix.
 
Our New Media Award invites artists whose practice involves the use of technology; examples include moving images, mobile apps, interactive installations, and sound art. 
 
The winner of the award will receive a £1,000 cash prize and a one-month solo show at Rich Mix in autumn 2019. When applying please outline your technical and spatial requirements and the duration of work, if applicable. 
 
This award allows us to extend our support to artists we couldn’t previously. We’re excited that we can now provide opportunities for an even wider range of artists and their practices and create an even more inclusive artist community.


1. Who can enter the New Media Award. 
The New Media Award is for artists who use technology within their practice for example, moving images, mobile apps, interactive installations, iPad, coding and sound art. 

2. If I submit information for this award will I still be eligible for the other awards like the Employees Choice, Sculpture Prize and Overall Winner in this year’s prize?
As long as it fits with the other criteria your submission will be considered for all the prizes it is eligible for. This is an additional award to the Ashurst Emerging Art Prize so your work will be considered for all of the awards on offer.

3. I don't think a single image summarises my work well, how else can I make sure the judges see it properly?
If you are producing work that is for example sound or moving image please also provide a link to where the judges can see the work in full.

4. My work is made up of multiple elements, how can I show these all together?
You're welcome to submit an install shot or alternatively upload a PDF file to the image section including the different elements. Please note this must still be one artwork. 

5. If successful do I have to provide my own equipment when exhibiting the work?
We are aiming, where possible, to provide the equipment necessary to exhibit work. If you have particular kit you use to display the works then this will be incorporated. The curation process will allow you to adapt to the gallery the work will be exhibited in. 

6. If selected, do I have to show the work that is shortlisted? 
No. You are welcome to develop your ideas and what is to be show supported by our team. 
 
We are open for submissions, and if you enter by 25th November 2018, you will be eligible for detailed written feedback by our team on your submission. See the entry form here.

If you have any more questions, feel free to email us at [email protected]

Q1: Tell us about your pathway into the Arts? 
My pathway to the arts was very natural. I was always interested in aesthetics and history, begging my mother to take me to the National Portrait Gallery from a young age and trying to understand the feat of artistic creation. I had an amazing Art History teacher who, amongst others throughout my education, allowed me to realise I express myself most effortlessly in discussing images and its societal context. I say to many... images predate words, so what better way to understand the world and its beauty? Curating shows came out of my writing, I see the exhibitions I curate as visual essays.
 
Q2: What are your values within the arts – why do what you do and what do you wish to champion and develop within the art world? 
I champion the exploration of identities and how multifaceted they are. This is made more accessible due to current discourse on the many nuances of identity and expression. I champion art that nods to the past and looks to the future. As an art history geek at heart (I studied at the Courtauld Insitute) I love to see new artists create exciting works and understand how they fit within the canon of art history, or if they don’t, why that’s necessary. I am very into painting about painting, so works that refer directly to the process and the materiality. But in the same vein I am so into objects, like the disintegrating works of Dominique White and more ephemeral works and performance, like Jamila Johnson-Small, where her dance exists most potently when present and not from documentation.
 
Q3: Tell us about your recent past projects
 I spent most of last year exploring with my writing; reading the great art critics and expanding on my own writing style which has been hugely therapeutic. I worked as the Digital Editor of Phoenix Magazine, which allowed me to develop my writing further and engage with different technologies and modes of presenting words, images and ideas. 

Q5: What kind of art attracts you? (we know this is a really broad and simplistic question but any comments would be great) 
Something visually impressive that prompts a response. And whilst paying homage to the canon it sits in, seeks to say or present something new and reflects the issues and questions that interests a contemporary viewer.
 
Q6: If there is one thing you would like Artists who approach you as a Curator or Critic to do what would it be? 
I am always so humbled and flattered when an artist has read, watched or familiarised themselves with my work. But I seek to engage with artists on a similar level to them, not as part of a patriarchal power system in the art world. I would love artists to consider intricate collaboration between curator and artist. As a critic, it is hard to attend and have opinions on every artist's show or work I come across, but I love speaking to artists and am open to letting such conversations complement the opinions I make in my writing. 

Interview by Caitlin Smyth

The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize, now in its fourth year, is open to artists of all ages and backgrounds, whether student, graduate, part-time or full-time, and has become an international competition. The below 25 artists were selected by our Judging panel of experts (we deem them this for their expertise as well as their career successes to date within the art world and you can learn more about them here) and show great emerging talent in both ideas and technique. These entrants present an example of artists whose practices we feel will break through the industry with the right drive and support now.
 
Prevalent themes in this year’s entrants have centred around identity; gender, heritage, ethnicity, sexuality, and what this means in the current climate. The diverse artworks on display explore the fluidity of gender roles, immigration and migrant identity and also what the role of contemporary art is in society today, among other ideas.
 
We’re incredibly proud to work with these artists over their year as a shortlisted or winning artist with the prize but our support doesn’t stop there, we are very much focused on supporting all those who enter the prize or join our community and we commit to doing this by offering feedback on every entrant who submits early, offering free career development talks open to entrants and non-entrants alike and a comprehensive blog giving insight into how to navigate prizes and the wider art world, to attract opportunities and projects.
 
Please do read on, engage with this year's Shortlisted Artists, support them with your constructive feedback and help us create a community that is driven to developing the Self Represented level of the art industry at a time when it has never been more viable to do so!

​Tal Regev, an Israeli artist living in London, completed her MA in Painting in 2017 at the Royal College of Art. Tal is concerned with the embodied experience of trauma. Through the materiality of the painting process, she explores memory, loss, separation and the effects of pain. Her works suggest a psychic map of what is held within the body.

Vaiolex
Tal Regev
Oil on Canvas
​190 x 170cm

​Annie-Marie Akussah, a Ghanian artist based in London, currently studies at Wimbledon College of Art for a BA in Fine Art. The recurring themes in her work are identity, belonging and the authenticity of identification documents. Her paintings hold colours that resemble the buildings and places expatriates may once have occupied, such as Indian red on the doors of council flats, and ochre on immigration office desks. The multiplicity of materials, techniques and mediums used in her work develops the context and enables her to use different avenues to explore painting without any boundaries. Annie-Marie’s shortlisted work is part of an ongoing series which explores inter-African migration. It uses three West African nations (Ghana, Nigeria and Ivory Coast) as an entry point to discuss certain important migratory movements and commerce, in relation to post independence (particularly between 1969 and 1987). The movement of Africans within Africa is somehow not spoken about in the wider world. In fact, within Ghana for instance, citizens are unaware of the existence of refugee camps but are aware of trade between African countries.

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Kwantunyi (Traveller)
Annie-Marie Akussah
Oil on Canvas and Silk Screen Print
171 x 171cm

​Ann Mackowski, originally from San Francisco, is now based in London after having completed an MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art. Her practice explores the different iterations of truth over time, and the overlap of mythology and social history in our interpretation of the world. Ann references both mythological and real historical figures in her work by reconstructing and altering them to explore concepts of visual heritage. 

“The Goddess of Crossroads” explores the intersection of vital forces that have shaped the City of London. The patroness of this painting is Trivia, the Roman goddess of crossroads, whose Roman nomenclature means "three roads". Inspired by John Gay's “Trivia”, written in 1714, a poem that frequently uses the trope of London as a body, "The Goddess of Crossroads" expands upon this concept by using topography to include history and pivotal social influences.

London is a fascinating petri dish of intersections--of art and science, history and modernism, organic and man-made spaces, land cultural influences from around the world. This painting binds foundational Romanic architecture from which London evolved, and explores unities of science, myth, literature, art , decay and the natural world.  It contains references from the Black Plague to the medical revolution of the late 18th century in which discoveries in anatomy, surgery, pathogenesis and vaccines would change the course of human history. It encourages viewers identify their own intersections when traversing the painting.​
​

The Goddess of Crossroads
​Ann Mackowski
Organic Pigment on Paper
85 x 125cm

​Elliot Nehra is from England and currently studies at the University of Brighton. Elliot’s practice explores colour and form and how these are used to reflect his own view of the everyday world. Figurative drawing, iconography and symbolistic values recur in his practice. Elliot is not interested in the viewer being able to interpret every single aspect of a painting clearly. Instead his work tackles the unconventional nature of life itself with a mess of thoughts and opinions. Often the work celebrates a current emotional state of mind, honouring the importance of that current time.​


Nuverland
Elliot Nehra
Oil, Acrylic and Spray Paint on Canvas
144 x 149cm

​Loreal Prystaj is a visual artist based in New York City and London. Presently she is attending the Royal College of Art in London to obtain her MA in Photography. Her work often exposes the relationship between time and space, with a juxtaposition of the human form and its environment. She expresses ideas through her photography and uses the medium consistently – in installation and interactive pieces – as well as using herself as a character or form in her performance and video work. Loreal’s shortlisted piece uses mirrors to highlight overlooked detail and the idea that they are often used to look at minute detail rather than the bigger picture surrounding us.​


Reflecting on Nature 2
Loreal Prystaj
Inkjet print on Hahnemuhle paper
100 x 70cm

Renata Kudlacek is currently part of the Art and Ethics research group at the University of Edinburgh and the artist project space Berlin Blue art in Berlin, Germany. She critically uses re-enactment and the aftermath of historic scenes in order to look back and construct memories and to make storytelling visible. Much of her recent work relates to the centuries old discussion, which raises the question of life and its origin – the challenge between old standards and the new science that requires constant revision. Renata’s shortlisted work reflects the Petri dish and the mythology of a never ending life within compositions of symbolic and medical images and objects.​


Tales of Telomeres I
Renata Kudlacek
4 Colour Screenprint and Pencil on Paper, Edition of 7
60 x 60cm

​László von Dohnányi currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany, after having studied for a BFA at the Ruskin School of Art. László is a painter who presents work that explores how the body is viewed, in particular the different ways we scan, photograph and expose what is internal. His selected work references the boundaries of the body and how these are now often breached by modern technology.​


The Abiogenetic Beings Half Death
László von Dohnányi
Acrylic and Linoprint paint on Arches Handcrafted Oil Paper
200 x 130cm

​Richard Graville is from the UK and received an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from Kingston University. As a painter he is interested in sharing visual codes used by animals to warn off predators, which take on the guise of abstract paintings. Richard is fascinated by the correlation between warning colouration in the natural world (bees, poison dart frogs, skunks) and its use in the human environment (hi-vis jackets, emergency vehicles, poison bottles). His shortlisted work is derived from the Postman Butterfly which is highly poisonous.​

​
The False Postman
Richard Graville
Flashe on Canvas
100 x 120cm

​Pietro Catarinella was born in Rome and studied for an MA in Photography at Central Saint Martins in London. Pietro investigates the changing nature of reality and visual representation in the digital age, exploring the new qualities and limitation of the digital image. His shortlisted work is from the series Data Traffic which is based upon a continuous manipulation of images. These are intersected, mixed and fused together through the use of software, digital technologies and manual intervention. The denial of the single image in assemblages, in which the elements are no longer separable, transforms it into parts of multi-layered networks. This process visualises synthetically the complexity of the digital age, its fragmentation and acceleration, and the accumulation and ubiquity of images.​


​
Fractal
Pietro Catarinella
Inkjet Print on Paper
100 x 100cm

​Harry Simmonds was born in Bristol and currently lives and works in Bath, England. He studied Fine Art at the University of Plymouth, Exeter. It was during this period that he started to paint exclusively in black and white/monochrome, making depictions of himself and also of the models who sit for him.​


Self Portrait No.9
Harry Simmonds
Ink and Acrylic on Paper
70 x 50cm

​Sin Park, born in South Korea and currently based in Glasgow, is currently undertaking a PhD at the Glasgow School of Art. Sin’s paintings explore memory through creating space for invisible visibility and familiar unfamiliarity. She is interested in the moment when something shifts, a metamorphosis that happens often from lack of controls, fears and failures, uncertain certainty in the painting surface, as well as the walk of life she is looking at.
​

An Attempt at a Dialogue
Sin Park
Acrylic, Marker, Oil pastel and Oil on Canvas
180 x 200cm

​Ewelina Skowronska is Polish and living and working between London and Tokyo. She studied Visual Arts at University of the Arts London. Ewelina’s work explores the interplay between colour, shape, perspective and pattern. Her work focuses on ephemeral and unspoken aspects at the point where the combination of screen printing and the delicacy of etching produces a unique and powerful contrast. Her selected work merges familiar shapes with the purely abstract and she pushes the boundaries of images into creations far beyond their initial inspiration.

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Body Alchemy
Ewelina Skowronska
Screen printing on paper, gold ink
50 x 70cm

Kwanwoo Park is a South Korean born artist who is currently completing an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London. His art practice is mostly driven by questions about our being and self-awareness. By designing and constructing objects, spaces and situations he pushes these concerns through concepts such as sense of self and its relation to identity, memory and time. Kwanwoo’s shortlisted work is a periscopic sculpture which allows you to see yourself seeing yourself; this creates an ambivalent moment, constantly changing the position between subject and object.
​

Stranger
Kwanwoo Park
Aluminium, Wood, Glass
250 x 170 x 16cm

Andy Farr is a UK based Artist who studied for an MA in Painting at the University of Coventry. His practice most recently has focused on moving from the third to the first person. His current collection of artworks are an exploration of the artists memories and experiences of growing up and focus on the emotional memory in recalling a place or situation. Andy’s shortlisted semi-biographical work. touches on memories of his father developing bipolar disorder when he was about 12 and the affect this had on his father’s behaviour and on his family. The piece explores Andy’s emotional memories of his father’s illness, invoking emotions in the viewer that encourages them to confront their own very personal experience in other ways.
​

Self Portrait
Andy Farr
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas
180 x 180cm

Lauren Wilson is from the UK and received a BA in Fine Art from University College Falmouth, then a MFA in Sculpture from Slade School of Art in 2014. She looks for quietly political moments to sculpt into a new context; a horse diving from a great height, an ivory miniature of Venus, the mysterious appearance of a donut on Mars. She narrates digressions from these points, tangents directed by obsession, intuition and finding pattern in what otherwise might be seen as random. Her shortlisted work is a dissection of a meeting she had with a fortune teller at Ridley Road Market in Dalston, London.


Synthetic Reproduction of Paranoia
Lauren Wilson
Jesmonite, Steel, Stone Effect Paint, Walnut, Photograph, Friendship Bracelet
30 x 35cm

​Abigail Phang Gung Fook (PHANGGUNGFOOK) was born in London, to parents who emigrated from the West Indies. She is of mixed heritage. Originally trained as a textile designer she is a recent MA Fine Art graduate of City and Guilds of London Art School. Phanggungfoopk’s practice is autobiographical based on her observations of the people close to her and the shared intimacy with her subjects. Her shortlisted artwork explores the female role in society and the pressures women feel to be perfect. She paints herself wearing high heels, constricted by stereotypical standards of female beauty, but the reality of the tasks that lie ahead is hinted at in the apron she wears.


I Am Not Perfect - When I feel a little wobbly
Abigail Phang Gung Fook (PhangGungFook)
Oil on Canvas
240 x 180cm

​Manuel Remeggio is originally from Italy and studied Fine Art in Venice and then at Middlesex University. Manuel’s practice explores the idea of aporia – an internal contradiction or battle. He uses his work to create a dialogue on this battle, explored through his visual decisions. His shortlisted work is part of the ‘Painting to Improve Life’ series which represent the internal faces or people through their composition.​


Mr Blu
Manuel Remeggio
Oil on Paper
50 x 40cm

​Melissa Pierce Murray is currently an Artists Access to Art Colleges (AA2A) artist-in-residence at Anglia Ruskin University. In her practice she uses a tactile engagement with materials to explore boundaries between interior and exterior worlds, juxtaposing an emotional response against intellectually and culturally constructed narratives. She is informed by poetry, physics and dance, and uses materials ranging from steel, stone and wood, to ice, glass and bubble-wrap. Her shortlisted work comes from a four-part series and explores the precarious resilience she sees in how humans relate to their physical environments and to each other around the globe.
​

Stasis IV
Melissa Murray
Glass and Steel
7 x 5 x 4cm

Ming Ying was born in China and is based both in China and UK. She completed a BA in Painting at Wimbledon College of Art. Ming mainly focuses on creating oil painting works. In her practice, she explores a personal painting language and devotes herself to bringing a new visual experience of painting to viewers. Her works include strong emotions, rich imagination, philosophical thought and personal experience. She is eager to express her thoughts and thinking of society, life and culture through her artworks.
​
​
Flowing Dream
Ming Ying
Oil on Canvas
65 x 90cm

​Juan Antonio Cerezuela Zaplana is from Spain and based in Barcelona. He has a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Granada, and has studied all over the world for his PhD in Visual Arts from the University of Valencia. His work deals with how identity is built through different media and contexts, where language – verbal and textual – occupies an important role and provides the main material that makes up his artistic work. In his shortlisted artwork, he presents the data collected by Google on its homepage during several minutes of silence, to draw attention to our lack of unawareness of this.

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Big Silent Data
Juan Antonio Cerezuela Zaplana
Inkjet on Paper Installation
​200 x 100 x 10cm

​Peihang Huang is London based from Taipei and studied at Chelsea College of Art & Design, receiving an MA in Fine Art. She is a painter who is interested in time, history and the influence of the media. Her recent practice challenges our perception of reality by exploring the hidden relations between visual documents of the human experience. Starting with collages of photographs gleaned from historical sources and everyday media, Peihang looks for the subtle associations that persist through time and space. Her shortlisted work references the forced migration as a result of the Chinese civil war 67 years ago.​


Past and Present 1
Peihang Huang
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas
120 x 120cm 

​Stephen Doyle is a fine artist from Cork whose work focuses on the Queer community and its interaction with the rest of society. Stephen’s shortlisted work is a discussion on how queer men are redefining male culture. The piece directly asks the viewer to consider which figure they deem to be ‘the man’.​

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Man and Subject
Stephen Doyle
Painting on Canvas, metal wire
​100 x 130 x 10cm

Tom Scotcher lives and works in Hackney, and gained a BA in Graphic Design and Illustration at Central Saint Martins before going on to study on the Postgraduate programme at the Royal Drawing School. Tom has worked as a scenic painter for theatre productions, and his art practice reflects this through an interest in the relationship between performance and the viewer. His shortlisted work aims to make the viewer feel suffocated and unable to walk around without treading on or knocking something over, as if walking on eggshells around the figure. There is a desire in the figure to escape, but an unwillingness to get up and implement any action that is involved in doing so.


Spice
Tom Scotcher
Gouache, Acrylic and Ink on Paper
115 x 103cm

​Iranian artist Forouzan Nazari and British artist Antony Dixon both recently received a MFA from Wimbledon College of Arts, and collaborate in their practice and research. Through a range of odd objects they explore cross-sensory perception of space and matter and how people understand the idea of expanding territory through their senses. Their shortlisted work suggests furniture legs which have been disrupted by the pouring of jesmonite over them giving the appearance of male and female elements to the work.

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Gender Balance
Forouzan Nazari & Anthony Dixon
Walnut and Jesmonite
​132 x 24 x 24cm

​Mustafa Boga is from Turkey and now based in London. He completed an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, and is interested in the role of contemporary art in our wider society. Mustafa’s practice deals critically (but also humorously) with issues such as gender, national identity, militarism, feminism, masculinity and sexuality. His shortlisted work uses photography to explore his relationship with his family and the clash of familial and cultural traditions, alongside his family’s struggle to understand the value of his practising of contemporary art.​


Extraneous Objects No1
Mustafa Boga
Photographic Print
50 x 65cm

​​The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2017 Judging Panel is a selection of highly respected and renowned individuals in the art world, who cover a wide range of viewpoints and varied tastes for all movements, mediums and types of Fine Art.
 
We are proud to have Dr David Anfam join this year’s Judging Panel and in this blog we ask him your questions so that you can get to know him and his work, as well as gain some advice and tips on the art world.

​About Dr David Anfam
 
David is Senior Consulting Curator at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, and Director of its Research Center. Based in London, Anfam’s many books and catalogues over the past forty years include studies of Jackson Pollock, Edward Kienholz, Howard Hodgkin, Wayne Thiebaud, Brice Marden, Jeff Elrod, Anish Kapoor and Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas – A Catalogue Raisonné (Yale University Press, 1998), which received the 2000 Mitchell Prize for the History Art.
 
He is the preeminent authority on Abstract Expressionism and his exhibition Abstract Expressionism, held at the Royal Academy of Arts last year, was described by Jackie Wullschlager, Chief Art Critic at the Financial Times, as "the most pleasurable, provocative exhibition of American art in Britain this century".

​Q1: Tell us about your pathway into the arts.
A1: My interest in art began quite early on as a child. There were two reasons: one negative, the other positive. When I was young I was often sick, especially with bronchitis that kept me in bed for a week or two at a time. Those were the days in pre-Thatcherite Britain when public libraries had serious funding – it’s hard to imagine now that was ever the case, but it was. So my parents – both of whom were not without a feeling for art – borrowed books from the local library to keep me relatively content.
 
Two types of volumes particularly fascinated. The first was Phaidon’s Colour Library series. I loved being able to look at a full-page reproduction and read about it on the facing page. The second were the Albert Skira art books, mostly monographs and movements. Whereas Phaidon’s series was large and slender in format, Skira’s was compact and comparatively thick – they perfectly complemented each other.
 
In a nutshell, then, the trauma of illness ultimately became a kind of muse. Being stuck in bed propelled me into the world of art. In retrospect, this now reminds me a bit of Nietzsche’s famous remark: ‘we have art so as not to die of the truth.’ Of course, I guess art has its own kind of truth, just as literature does. Consoling fictions, ideas of order and the like that life may deny us.
 
The second reason was more benign. At school there used to be framed posters on some of the walls with reproductions and accompanying texts. Leonardo, Rembrandt, Renoir – those kind of ‘popular’ names. When we queued to go into classes – which I often hated, not least because of my deafness – I started to study these posters. The more I saw and read, the more I wanted to explore different artistic periods, styles and so on. They promised a limitless horizon beyond everyday drudgery.
 
Actually, my deafness is not coincidental. Years later, an academic pointed out something so obvious that I had never realized it. In short, that because the world of sound was partially closed to me that of vision became the more enthralling.
 
Another big issue that I’ve only grasped with hindsight is that, simply put, art’s magnetism was, again, twofold (I know, everything seems to come in pairs like Noah’s Ark, doesn’t it?). On the one hand and looking back, color is what gripped me from the start. On the other hand, I was always drawn to images that captured the enchantment, anxiety, strangeness or even horror of life. No wonder figures such as Bruegel, Titian, Vermeer, Cézanne, Munch, Bonnard, Rothko and Clyfford Still have long been fixed stars in my firmament, so to speak. In varying degrees, each of them struck a balance or at least a dialectic between form and content, the visual and the existential (Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas has to be the last painterly word on human suffering, a sort of testament to the belief that this is the lot of humanity). No wonder Rothko also became my idol.
 
My father also used to take me to the local museum in Brighton, which then had on loan much of the remarkable Edward James collection before it got sold. He kept focusing us on two paintings: Magritte’s The Red Model II and an obscure English artist called Algernon Newton. The Magritte with its deathly feet turning into boots (or vice-versa) always struck us alike as scary, whereas Newton’s Paddington Basin (1925) had an almost abstract, miraculous precision to it in which the very grime of London’s air seemed to be captured like an amber that froze forever the geometrically stylized warehouses and water. Magritte’s uncanny disquiet met Newton’s canny quiescence. Somewhere in here are the roots of opposing tendencies that much later influenced my ways of seeing.
 
So by about the age of 14 or 15 I had decided to become an art historian rather than a chemist (in chemistry lessons the diverse colors and textures – from the crystalline to the liquid, sulphur’s pungent yellow and copper sulphate’s dreamy blue captivated me). When the time came to apply for a university position, I asked an English teacher, who liked to rightly goad his pupils into achievement, what should be my number one choice? He shot back, the Courtauld Institute of Art. In the same breath he added that I’d never make it because at one level it looked like a finishing school for rich girls who told their daddies they wanted to ‘do’ art.
 
To cut a long story short, I did get to the Courtauld with what was then its stellar faculty, where a state grant saw me through an undergraduate degree and well into a PhD too, including a year’s research in the US. John Golding was my supervisor and I remain eternally grateful to him for keeping me on track with my heroes Still and Rothko. John also taught me never to write in jargon, an injunction that subsequently the ‘new art history’ either failed to learn or deliberately defied. The result is unreadable writing.
 
In my opinion, the larger practical lesson to these memories is that a pathway to the arts won’t materialize out of thin air. Any country that slashes funding to libraries (or their current cyber equivalents), education, museums and so on is committing cultural hara-kiri.

​Q2: Tell us about your recent past projects (where can we learn more about them?).
A2: Over the past few years I’ve been very fortunate to be constantly engaged with energizing projects. In Denver, I’ve done a string of exhibitions at the Clyfford Still Museum. They’ve ranged from Still’s extraordinary dialogue with van Gogh and art history in general to his remarkable capacity to create works in pairs or series as well as repeating shapes within his images like replicas or doppelgängers. My long-term mission and that of the museum is to restore Still to his position as one of the titans of twentieth-century art. For those interested in learning more, the museum’s website is a pretty good starting-point.
 
Jackson Pollock has also preoccupied me. It was exciting on several counts to do a focus exhibition around Pollock’s Mural (1943), the largest canvas he ever created. Firstly, the Getty did a terrific job of restoring this epochal painting and I’m lucky to have had the chance to study it before, during and after the massive conservation campaign. Secondly, the opening venue was the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. There, the then-director Philip Rylands had the vision to install the works in Peggy’s palazzo itself rather than the temporary exhibition spaces - which I irreverently call 'the bottom of the garden'. This is only the second time in the Guggenheim’s history that this has happened – and to me at least the result was revelatory. Here was a potent reminder that most of the ‘big guns’ of Abstract Expressionism were, on the whole, made and shown in domestic or relatively confined spaces, not expansive ‘white cube’ galleries, which of course came later. The latter tend to dilute the works’ impact whereas in the former they come across with a hugely greater sense of concentration. Upfront rather than laid-back. Thames & Hudson published the accompanying book. If nothing else, I hope, among other things, that it clarifies Pollock’s crucial interest – and a hitherto underestimated one – in photography.
 
A third project – perhaps the most rewarding of all – was Abstract Expressionism at the Royal Academy, which I co-curated. To my eye, the RA’s magisterial galleries are the finest in London bar none. Against all expectations we got a veritable cornucopia of loans. For example, Pollock’s newly-cleaned Mural faced off against his Blue Poles. I doubt if we will see these two pictures – effectively the alpha and omega of Pollock’s core trajectory – together again in a long time.
 
When the RA show closed in Bilbao last June, I felt it ought to be my swansong on the subject. Which is not to say that I won’t continue with Ab Ex© – on the contrary, I feel so close to it that I’ve recently decided (don’t laugh) to copyright this abbreviation since for years I’ve found the full term to be such a mouthful when lecturing or writing – but rather that it’s key to always diversify in order not to stand still, become fossilized or intellectually archival. Speaking of which, the opportunity to write a longish essay on the late Belgian artist Philippe Vandenberg was for me another of last year’s highlights. Not being very familiar with Vandenberg’s art until then, I came to it cold, which is much better than being jaded. Thus I found it tonic to reconsider figuration against the artist’s involvement with memory, angst and the awful historical events of the past century. Hauser & Wirth did the show in New York and published the meaty catalogue. Which reminds me that commercial galleries now can be a lot more scholarly than academe.
 
Likewise, I jumped at the offer from Blain|Southern to write about Jonas Burgert for his exhibition at Mambo, Bologna. Jonas has given representationalism a new lease of life in canvases that are often vast in scale and equally potent for their singular mix of carnivalesque brightness and darkly nightmarish enigmas. Three visits to Jonas’s Berlin studio in the last twelve months or so are reminders, if a reminder is necessary, that there’s no substitute for encountering art in the flesh and as it is being made. I can think of academics to whom such a sentiment might sound naïve. If so, let them feed on their own theories. Truth to tell, though, I do believe in theory myself – except that it should never be worn like an exoskeleton.

​Q3: What are you working on at the moment and over the next year?
A3: Right now I have an exhibition of Larry Poons’s paintings in the twenty-first century that's just opened at the Roberto Polo Gallery in Brussels. Alongside Frank Stella (who admires him greatly) Larry is one of the two major survivors from the heroic generation of American Color Field painters of the 1960s. At eighty, Larry is painting with the vigor of a man half his age. He was also among the first to turn against Clement Greenberg’s overweening purist dogmas. In turn, hopefully this show will lead to a far larger project or two.
 
Life is too short to engage with only the biggest ‘names’ in art, especially when quieter hands can produce work of comparable or even greater substance to the hyped stars. Consequently, I have a publication upcoming with the Ronchini Gallery on the ravishingly polished Italian abstract painter Paolo Serra who’s little known outside his country. In complete contrast, if everything goes according to plan, I will also be looking towards China for another project, which I must otherwise keep under wraps for the time being.

​Q4: Where did your interest in and focus on Abstract Expressionism begin?
A4: The answer is simple. My father had a lifelong romance with American culture, as indeed did many people of his generation this side of the water post-1945 to whom the US looked like, well, the future. Someone told me that was how even E.H. Gombrich regarded it. That my father never crossed the Atlantic probably intensified his feelings. Thus I was brought up on a diet of Frank Sinatra, jazz, film noir, Hemingway, silk suits, Betty Crocker cake mix and big-finned cars (if memory serves, before I turned up my dad once owned a Chevy, which must have been a sight in Dulwich circa 1950). He never got quite as far as Ab Ex, though. I did.

Q5: What constitutes good Abstract Expressionism? (We know it’s a big, simplistic question, but any comments would be interesting for the wide audience we have).
A5: Ouch, you’re not supposed to ask such difficult questions! Seriously, at the end of the day quality comes in just one size. Whatever that is, it either hits you outright or subtly seduces. Rothko, Still and Pollock can do both. They juggle spontaneity and deliberation, rawness and refinement. With his synthesis of iron discipline, reductiveness and color that hypnotizes the gaze, Ad Reinhardt was a genius at the second approach. The show of his blue paintings at Zwirner New York last autumn threw me. So cool yet so, well, ardent. At the RA, the de Koonings, Klines and David Smiths looked as fresh and challenging as if they’d been done yesterday. The best of Ab Ex has real staying power, the lesser lights tend to feel like exponents of a period style. Then again, there’s a figure such as Richard Pousette-Dart. Like Mark Tobey and Sam Francis, Pousette-Dart is virtually unknown or at least undervalued in this country. My guess is that Francis’s big canvases at the RA went over more than a few people’s heads. At his finest, Pousette-Dart had a deeply poetic, magical vision. Maybe the ultimate test of top drawer Ab Ex is whether it can still do something for successive generations who were born after it. At the RA it was heartening to see young people – doubtless fledgling artists among them – palpably responding to what was on the walls with real enthusiasm. That’s the test of a classic: it reinvents itself over time for new eyes.

Q6: Do you think your likes and dislikes, tastes in art, have changed over time? Do you have any examples?
A6: Yes. I am starting to grow weary of abstraction. I’ll never forsake it but I do need periodic doses of figuration in order to sustain a healthy appetite, as it were. Once upon a time, I thought Morandi was a bore. Now I could happily see an entire museum of his work, as I did in Venice in 1998. Howard Hodgkin was a superb painter and a very nice chap too on whom I enjoyed writing. Nonetheless, I am sated with HH’s work, at least for the time being. When I was young I loved Delacroix: these days he frequently strikes me as dull. At the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam on Christmas Day I stumbled across a still life of peaches by the seventeen-century painter Adriaen Coorte that I scrutinized for almost a quarter of an hour. Years ago I’d probably never even have noticed it. Previously, I tended to like what I half-jokingly call ‘messy’ artists – from Bosch to, say, Nolde or Basquiat. ‘Control freak’ artists – Piero to Brice Marden and Agnes Martin – have increasingly if not altogether replaced them in my estimation. To cite a random name or two, at first I never much cared for Cindy Sherman or Roxy Paine, both of whom now strike me as marvelous. Ditto Barry X. Ball and others too numerous to mention. Never a favorite of Damien Hirst, I thought his extravaganza at the last Venice Biennale was a work of genius down to the mock-scholarly brochure.
 
Q7: Do you have any advice for emerging artists?
A7: It’s the lesson that Clyfford Still would have given them. Go your own way, resist the blandishments of Vanity Fair – the social phenomenon, that is, not the magazine – remember that you can never think nor look too much… and don’t despair if you don’t make it to the top ten. As Mahler said, ‘my time will come.’
 
Q8: Where do you think many artists falter in their practice or career?
A8: Getting older and more celebrated, they repeat themselves and/or sell out.

​Q10: Do you have any thoughts or predictions for the art world? (A very open, difficult question!).
A10: The current overheating cannot last forever. What goes up must come down. Or must it? As wily old Karl Marx was the first to avow, capitalism – for better or worse – never ceases to amaze. Nor does art.

©.Art Ex Ltd 2018

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Interview by Conrad Carvalho and Caitlin Smyth

Our 2nd talk in the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2018 series sees some of our previous shortlist and winners join us to talk about where they are now and how they’ve maximised opportunities to get there. Below we’ve written up this advice and discussion covering:

• The Artist’s journey’s to where they are
• How they have selected and maximised opportunities they have applied to
• What opportunities they’ve attracted less conventionally and how
• What advice they have for their peers on tackling opportunities.

 
FIRST TO BRIEFLY INTRODUCE OUR SPEAKERS: ​

​Maureen Jordan – Sculpture Prize Winner 2016.
 
Maureen was our first Sculpture Prize Winner. She recently held her first solo show, alongside Folkestone Triennial, displaying new work and is looking towards residencies next year both in the UK and abroad.

See more of her work at https://www.mvjordan.com/ 

​Brad Kenney – Shortlisted Artist 2016.
 
Brad’s practice is centred on painting, since graduating from his Masters in Fine Art from Chichester University he has sold work and exhibited internationally. His exhibition calendar is already filling up for 2018 and 2019.

See more of his work at https://www.bradkennystudio.com/
 

​Bob Aldous – Shortlisted Artist 2015.
 
Bob is an Abstract painter and poet. Since his shortlisting in 2015 he has become represented by Gray Modern & Contemporary Art and Cricket Fine Art. He has exhibited several times at The Other Art Fair and the London Art Fair and has also shown work at LAPADA. His most recent success was a solo show at One Paved Court Wimbledon.

See more of his work at http://bobaldous.com/

QUESTIONS TO THE ARTISTS:
 
What point would you say you’re at now in your careers and how did you get there?
 
BOB: Now represented after talking to a dealer at London Art Fair in 2015 who came down to The Other Art Fair and loved my work. London Art Fair then featured my work on their social media – instagram – and that led to a Chelsea based dealer getting in touch. Right now, although I’m technically represented I still very much feel like I am self-representing a lot but this combination works. Talking to people has been paramount to where I am now.
 
BRAD: I graduated from my MA in 2015 and made the decision to work part time and spend the rest of my time in the studio, I did lots of applications for opportunities all over the country and a year later I decided to give it a go working as a full time artist. Now, I am slowly making more steady sales and commissions, I run a monthly workshop which has been good at spurring on my own creativity to make work.
 
MAUREEN: Despite being a ‘mature’ artist I am still very much an emerging one. I feel like I am now getting into my stride not just after winning the 2016 Sculpture Prize with the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize but also holding a solo show under my own volition during Folkestone Triennial – it’s really never too early in a career to try this I don’t think. What has been important is more consistently making new work, it has increased my confidence in what I am doing and helped me refine my practice more.
 
What do you consider your top successes to date?
 
MAUREEN:  My solo show in Folkestone, because it was a challenge to put myself and my new work out there for feedback whatever it may be in such a vulnerable way. I’ve also secured a residency in Vermont, initially I thought there must not have been too many applications but when I asked it turned out there were 1200 and 50 were shortlisted so to be selected knowing that was a big confidence boost.
 
BOB: Definitely when my work went to LAPADA with a dealer that was a break through moment. It came at a point when I really needed it, not just because the value of my work went up – this is definitely not the only measure of success – but because of the validation it offered.
 
BRAD: Getting my work into London was an important success. And also my second solo show which I held in an art store. Not because I had to produce the work but in this instance I had to curate, install, market and invite everyone down and this was a new and valuable skillset to learn.
 
How do you choose the right opportunities to apply to?
 
BRAD: I find opportunities via newsletters, looking online and word of mouth. I then do lots of research. I look at the kind of image the opportunity presents, what artists have the shown previously, what tone do they present, what location are they in and do these things add up to suit me and my goals.
 
MAUREEN: I used to apply for everything but soon learnt this wasn’t necessarily the most helpful way to do things! I now look a lot for paid opportunities so I am not paying out – often opportunities which don’t have a monetary benefit don’t take into account costs like materials, time, travel, etc., that the artist may have to pay out to take part. If the opportunity isn’t paid then are the benefits worth it to develop my practice. For example, a residency I have coming up in a woods isn’t paid but it is worthwhile – its near where I live, offers me the chance to extend work I’ve done previously, is alongside other artists so will give me peer interaction and involves a symposium and catalogue so, exposure. Always bring it back to what the benefits are to you as an artist.
 
Have you ever turned down an opportunity?
 
BOB: Yes a number of them! Usually because the cost is too high. It’s always worth remembering that being an emerging artist means you are a market and there are opportunities out there that are driven by wanting your money and not benefitting your career. Remember to research so you can decipher which ones are worth possibly paying for and which aren’t and don’t be afraid to contact opportunities directly or other artists who have done them before and can possibly shed light on whether they are beneficial.
 
 
AUDIENCE Q & A:
 
What were you ‘break through’ moments?
 
MAUREEN: Winning the Sculpture Prize with the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize in 2016 was definitely one. It gave me confidence and validation that I was on the right path which was very motivating to keep going.
 
Do you feel there are more opportunities in London and that is where to look?
 
BRAD: There is more of course, it’s the capital and a hub for the arts so naturally there will be more opportunities. But that doesn’t mean you stop looking elsewhere, I still apply to opportunities all over the country as it will open up new audiences to my work and can be just as beneficial. You just have to make sure again that you research the opportunity and make sure it is right for you.
 
What tips do you have on approaching galleries?
 
BOB: We all know it’s a big no-no to approach galleries at art fairs but I ended up getting talking to a dealer at London Art Fair, it turned out we had someone in common and the connection grew from there. I invited them to a few things including The Other Art Fair which they came to and it grew quite organically from there. The opportunity came more from talking to people and being present in the wider art world.
 
BRAD: One thing a gallerist told me was that a number of artists approached him but didn’t know anything about the gallery. If you’re emailing a gallery demonstrate you know a bit about them so it doesn’t look like a generic mail out or is a waste of their time. If your work doesn’t fit, don’t approach. One other thing I think is a good idea is to look at what is around a gallery – pubs, restaurants, cafes etc. Maybe see if they’ll put your work up and see if you can attract the gallery staff to come and have a look. Rather than approaching a gallery you need to place yourself in their way.
 
Do you have any tips on gaining exposure via social media?
 
CONRAD: Yes! We have a blog on our website where we talk about this and offer our top tips, see it here: http://www.artprize.co.uk/blog-articles/how-to-promote-yourself-1

Where do Art Consultants find Artists?
 
CONRAD: As a Consultant I used to go via word of mouth and visiting art fairs and group exhibitions. Now I more often use the database of artists we have through the prize. We keep all the entry forms and artists details and if a client is looking for something specific we can look through our Instagram feed – we post every entrant on there – to find a work or artist that fits what they are looking for then link it back to the application and get in touch!
 
Do you have contracts or agreements in place so if you sell a work you can still use it in exhibitions or for opportunities? If yes how do you do this?
 
BRAD: Usually I discuss this on a case by case basis with a collector, most are happy to oblige if it means the work or me as the artist is doing well – every step stone of success adds value and provenance to the work they now own after all. However, just be aware that if you’re reusing a work that you will be responsible for any costs incurred not the collector.
 
CONCLUSION:
 
We asked our Speakers to summarise their best advice for Emerging Artists, here it is:
 
BRAD:

• Be dedicated and consistent. It’s a lifestyle not a career and you must consider this. Are you willing to put your art practice above everything else? To make deadlines and relinquish certain other things to pursue it? It will demand a lot from you – more than you think – so be prepared for that.

• Don’t listen to discouragement. It can come in many forms, from the boss who doesn’t understand why you won’t take extra shifts to the friends who don’t get why you can’t go out every Friday night or even from yourself. You will always care the most about your practice. Keep this at the forefront of what you do and why you do it.

• Be online. Use social media, get a website and use these as a place people can find your work, make it easy for them and you to get more visibility.

 
MAUREEN:

• Get good photographs of your work. Don’t rely on others to take these but make sure you are documenting and archiving what you are doing for future reference and opportunities.

• Be flexible and opportunistic. If things fall through or take wrong turns look for other ways to work. Be open to different ways of working and different ways of developing your practice, development can come in unusual ways for example I worked on minimum wage and a zero hours contract through Folkestone Triennial which is something I never thought I’d do but it taught me so much about public art and installation, I met a lot of interesting people and made contacts.

 
BOB:

• Learn Photoshop/Illustrator/In Design. Having some basic skills with this can really enhance how you capture your work in a photograph and help you get it as close to the original as you can.

• Present your work well. If you want to target bigger buyers and higher price tags then you must think about presentation like the backs of paintings (I had to put boards and sub frames on mine!), decent mounting and framing. These touches can really help.

• You must enjoy it: You’re going to work unconventional hours, not be able to switch off, have odd deadlines, you’ve got to keep that enjoyment for what you do close and keep revisiting it.

 
​
Our next talk is coming up on the 17th January at Ashurst entitled How to Grow Your Art Career. You can read more or RSVP via this link: www.artprize.co.uk/events
​

HOW WE CHOOSE THE WINNERS
 
For the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2018 Talk Series’ 1st event (www.artprize.co.uk/events), we had two of our longest standing judges; Sotheby’s Art Business MA Programme Director and Art Historian Dr David Bellingham and Royal British Society of Sculptors Committee Member and Sculptor and Installation Artist Briony Marshall join us to give insight into the judging process behind the prize and how they choose the winners.
 
Led by our Prize Director and Art Consultant Conrad Carvalho, the judges talked about what they look for in entries, what it’s like viewing thousands of artworks each year and how they come to a consensus to choose the winners. You can learn more about the judges here by visiting www.artprize.co.uk/the-prize.html/#judges
 
Our Prize has always maintained a strong ethos of helping as many artists as possible which we do in two ways. We offer practical feedback on all early entrant application forms (check the website for the deadline for this here: www.artprize.co.uk/the-prize.html/#EntryDetails) and we promote all those who enter the prize, and then of course we offer prizes and exhibitions to those who win. These Winners must show; great creative potential within their chosen medium, they must be trying to engage with the viewer and encourage them to think beyond the work in front of them and the judges must feel that winning the prize will be an important step in the Artist’s career.
 
 
OUR QUESTIONS TO THE JUDGES
 
Tell us a bit your own pathway in the Arts?
 
David Bellingham: ‘I started in classical literature, so I look at contemporary art from a more classical perspective. I do believe that an artwork from any age should be able to retain its relevance irrespective of the age it was created in. I taught classical art and mythology which led me to Sotheby’s who asked if I could teach ancient Greek and Roman art and, from there, it was by luck that an opening on the Sotheby’s Art Business course came up and I was asked to take it on, I haven’t left since! I definitely feel I’m eclectic in taste and experience – some would say a jack of all trades…’
 
Briony Marshall: ‘Primarily I am an Artist (Sculptor) and ideally I would spend all day every day in the studio, but nowadays it doesn’t work like that unless you’re very lucky. I came to art later on in life after studying Biochemistry at Oxford University. After University I went and got a job (as is expected) but after 4 years, and rediscovering my passion for sculpture, I decided to go back to Art School, from which I graduated from in 2004. I have been a practicing Artist since then. Alongside my art practice I also teach a professional development course at The Art Academy where we focus on educating artists on the different pathways that can be taken and how to sustain your practice. I still apply to opportunities, you never stop doing this so hopefully I’ll have some insight I can share from a judge and applicant perspective.’
 
To get an idea of your tastes and the things that interest you I have a few questions…
 
Who are your favourite artists or what is your favourite artwork, and why?
 
David Bellingham: My taste in art has changed often over the years, it often relates to emotional events in my own life, a turning point or a feeling of synergy with a particular artist. If I have to choose I’d choose one old and new piece/artist. One would be Caravaggio, he’s fashionable to look at now but when I first saw his work in Rome people weren’t seeking his work out as much. He portrayed real people of Rome as religious figures, it was very rebellious against the academic artist traditions of the time. My newer work would be Derek Jarman’s ‘Caravaggio’, it came out just after I had first seen Caravaggio’s works in Rome and it is a daring and confident piece which can be contextualised. That is what I like to see in artists and their work today.
 
Briony Marshall: This is not a question I like! Because I’m a sculptor I can find myself at exhibitions ignoring all the work on the walls and just focusing on the sculpture. When I was growing up I was very into the French Sculptor Camille Claudel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Claudel), she really reinvigorated Rodin’s practice later in his career. I also really like Ann Christopher (https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/artist/ann-christopher-ra), her work is object based but is abstract which in some ways is quite traditional but they have a looseness within the structure. And Cornelia Parker (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/cornelia-parker-2358) for her use of materials, the way she suspends work and plays with gravity. I do also really like ‘objects of desire’ as in things you can hold in your hand and carry with you.
 
Are you drawn to a particular movement/genre/medium/particular topics?
 
David Bellingham: Mythology really interests me in terms of topics but not so much through surrealist styles. I’m also very interested in portraits from all ages and styles. Generally tastes change each year, just because one style or medium didn’t get picked up one year doesn’t mean it won’t another.
 
Briony Marshall: I focus on Sculpture, it’s my expertise. However, I still discuss and judge the 2D work but I tend to look to the other judges for expertise on that. In terms of topics we definitely look for genuine investigations of areas. We can tell when the subject or ideas that we’re being told the work is about have come after the work has been made or if they have informed the creation of a piece. Be genuine in talking about your work, don’t put ideas into it if they’re not there.
 
Can you recall examples of how the entrants caught your interest?
 
Briony Marshall: We get very little time to look over the huge number of artists, we realize not all artworks can be judged this quickly or without seeing other information though and try to account for this but in the context of this prize or any others be sympathetic to this with what you submit. I personally find it easier seeing more than one image, the images provided are paramount to me deciding on whether an artwork will go through to the next stage. Ask friends, etc. to see which they think are best if you are struggling – they will look with fresh eyes. Also it’s worth remembering that once we get down to a smaller number we really scrutinize the other information provided – image commentary, artist statement, websites. Be very clear, concise and genuine with how you write this.
 
David Bellingham: Seeing 2D work is much more difficult, if there’s texture try to capture this well with really good lighting. We get a lot of 2D work and a lot less sculpture so really work to get good photos to make your work standout.
 
Anything in particular about any of the winners that made you highlight them?
 
David Bellingham: I’ve always liked work that combines both traditional and contemporary edges, for example the first year prize winner Jessica Debba, who is self-taught, made technically fantastic portraits but they were at times quite unnerving and less traditional in the emotions portrayed. Sculpture Prize winner Maureen Jordan’s winning sculpture used pieces of stained glass which seem very traditional but she placed these in a bed frame which brought them into a modern setting. For me work needs to relate to the current time and climate, it needs to reference its context. When looking at Yuting Wang, the most recent Winner, she took elements of traditional Chinese techniques and has brought them into a modern style through technique, colour and composition. What we’re really looking for is something that hasn’t been picked up anywhere else
 
Briony Marshall: I look for artists that won’t be one hit wonders, again sculptor Maureen Jordan’s work showed really interesting potential, it was something I’d never seen before and the ideas behind it were interesting. It needs to engage the viewer, for me art isn’t just for you, it needs to speak to a viewer within a context and relate to the audience.
 
 
QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE:
 
Q: “Would you crop a photo of the work so it is just the work or would you include background so you can give a scale and do you zoom into photos?”
A: We zoom in if we need to – it very much depends on the work
Definitely make sure you crop so there is nothing distracting us from looking at your work.
 
Q: “If you have a more unusual practice, maybe using many mediums and it is 3 dimensional, how would you document it?”
A: You could consider a photomontage where you put two or three images into one to allow us to see the work from different angles. Make sure you can still see these well – so not too many angles – but play with this. Make sure you light it well, there are so many poorly lit submissions and it makes it really hard to properly and fairly judge.
 
Q: “As a self-taught artist how important is it to be able to place that artists work within a historical context?”
 
A: We will always look at the artwork as it is, that is what we are judging. But bear in mind artworks don’t work in isolation and they do benefit from having a context. This could be a historical, cultural, technical or practical context; it’s not all about art history.
 
Q: “Is there a limit to how old an artwork that we submit can be? Some prizes specify work shouldn’t be older than 2 years.”
A: We don’t set a limit for this but we would say submit what is most relevant and current in your practice. If you do win and you are looking to supply more work for the Winners Exhibition you want to make sure you are presenting what your practice is now and that this is the work the judges have seen.
 
Q: “How long should the image commentary be?”
A: We allow up to 250 words but would probably suggest making it shorter than this. It will make it more succinct and more easily digestible.
 
Q: “Should all the artworks we submit go together?”
A: As a prize we don’t ask that you submit a series of works that hang together, we understand that you are emerging artists who will be exploring different avenues and we hope that the feedback and if you win or be shortlisted, that our guidance will aid you in developing your practice. Again, some judges disagree and it helps them understand the artist better and spot potential if they see a few works in collection.
 
Q: “There are some genres of art you don’t accept, why?”
A: We right now can’t accept performance and video, this isn’t because we’re not interested but we simply can’t support the technical side of exhibiting these works yet. We’re hoping as we develop we’ll be able to broaden what we can accept – watch this space!
 
Q: “I had feedback last year that I needed to talk more about the process behind my work, can you tell me more about this?”
A: We want to know not only about the making process but also the process of ideas that you went through to reach this final piece, it adds context and helps us understand what you are trying to explore. Be concise and simple with your writing, you don’t need to be overly flamboyant or expressive. As Briony said ‘it’s like a sauce where you need to boil off all the water to get to the real flavour’
 
Q: “Should you submit different application forms for different bodies of work?”
A: There isn’t anything stopping you doing this, and each application will be considered separately. We are looking at the artworks individually, so don’t worry if the pieces you want to submit don’t sit alongside each other, that won’t count against you.
 
To join us for our next free career development talks for artists, join our newsletter by subscribing here.

As part of the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize every year we offer the option for early entrants to request feedback on their application. The deadline for this in November or December each year and full details with exact dates are here: http://www.artprize.co.uk/the-prize.html/#EntryDetails
 
When we established the prize in 2014 we wanted to offer real benefit to all artists who enter, not just the winners. We do this by offering feedback, promoting all entrants and offering a free career development talks series with each edition, which is also a great way to meet us, the judges and each other. Details for our next talk can be seen here: http://www.artprize.co.uk/events.html
 
We describe this feedback as practical and tailored to each entrant, i.e. with actionable and specific tips that are written by experts who carefully review you’re individual applications. The advice we give is to support your career and profile development… but what does that mean? Below is a breakdown of what to expect if you confirm you’d like to receive that feedback.
 
Your feedback will be broken down into three key areas with 3 further subsections:
    (1) Artist Statement
    (2) Images of Artworks
    (3) Image Commentaries 

Within these three sections we aim to offer more in-depth feedback on particular elements, read on to see what they are and how you can maximise what you submit.

(1) ARTIST STATEMENT:
Length – We’re looking for a statement that isn’t too long or too short. What we mean by that is that you cover all the necessary information in succinct and to the point way.
Content – What have you covered in your statement? Are there any areas you could have elaborated on or included? How have you written it – is the language and tone easily understandable? This is the biggest section under the artist statement feedback. We will look at what you’ve covered in the text and whether this gives a good snapshot of you as an artist as well as look at how you have written it. Is the language simple and easy to understand or have you been overly elaborate? Does the structure flow or jump around making it hard to grasp ideas?
Grammar and Punctuation – Yes we know this is an obvious one but you’d be surprised how often this isn’t done as well as it could be! What we see the most are very long sentences, so break them up to encourage better flow of your text. And that’s what we’re looking at, that you’ve used grammar and punctuation well to give good flow to your statement, which will encourage the text to be easier to read and absorbed.

(2) IMAGES OF YOUR ARTWORK:
File quality and size – For this we are looking at whether the actual image file is of good quality. For example if compression of a file is too high it can look blurry or if the resolution is too low you may lose detail. Also if the file is very large we may have trouble opening it. We recommend sending a JPEG file with a resolution of at least 2048 x 1536 pixels, and should be around 1-3Mb. You can upload images up to 20Mb though. This will ensure your photos are optimized for our system, and looks detailed enough in case we want to zoom in and look closer.
Image Quality – Here we’re looking at things like is the photo blurry, are the colours dark or is the lighting off. All the external factors that could affect how your artwork looks to us. We’ll try to give feedback if we see this and offer solutions you could try to improve the quality next time.
Composition – Making sure the composition of the photos you take give the artwork all the focus is an obvious thing to want to achieve but again this is something we see as not done well. We’ll be looking at whether the artwork is the only thing in the shot, and that it’s clear what the artwork is. We’ll let you know if it’s not centered or if you can crop closer to the piece to make sure you’re allowing the judges the best view of your work.
 
(3) ARTWORK COMMENTARIES:
Length – Again we’re looking for it to be the right length to get your ideas across succinctly, so just like your artist statement try to keep this punchy and to the point. These should be much shorter than your statement,
Content – Your artwork commentaries should relate back to the ideas you presented in your statement but offer more details about the specific artwork they accompany. We’re looking for further information on the making process of this specific piece and what particular ideas you are exploring. Again try to work with a simple structure, one could be you talk about 2-3 specific ideas you are exploring in the piece, the making process and then relate this back to your wider practice.
Grammar and punctuation – this is the same as with the artist statement, use good grammar and punctuation to help the flow of your text and keep the language simple.
 
On top of the above we also have an extra comments section where if there is any other feedback that we feel would help you in supporting your practice we’ll add it in here.
 
We hope these pointers will not only support you with applications to prizes but also across a range of opportunities and help you with viewing what you present objectively so you can take control of your own development.
 
If you would like to receive the feedback on your entry, you MUST ENTER BEFORE THE NOVEMBER OR DECEMBER DEADLINE, and reply to your entry confirmation email by end of December confirming this.
 
If you have any questions you can always email us at [email protected]!
 
Good luck, and we look forward to seeing your art,
Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize Team

We’re very pleased to announce the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2017 Shortlisted Artists. The 25 selection reflect the growing diversity we are seeing within those who enter, with Artists hailing from as far as Canada, Germany and South Korea, this year see’s the Artists looking at themes such as our relationship to technology, sexuality and self in the fast changing and volatile culture we are currently surrounded by.

We’ll be sharing works of art by the Shortlisted Artists over the coming months as well as continuing to share all of our entrants, so do keep your eye on our social media pages, interact, offer constructive criticism and support each other’s development. As a prize we focus on supporting the development of Emerging Artists so we not only want to share the visuals but the words behind each shortlisted Artist’s practice, read on to discover this year’s Shortlist, enjoy the work but also enjoy excerpts from their Artists Statements - pay attention to how they have written their statements – style, structure, content. 

Sarah Shaw
www.sarahshaw.co.uk 
UK

I am in a constant state of redefining my process and aims as a painter. At the heart of my work there is a fascination with the endless possibilities within paint, how to transform a two-dimensional space into something with narrative or the possibility to transport the viewer but the most important part of painting for myself is to get caught up in the process and allow a conversation to happen between myself and the painting.  

The work often hovers in a place between figuration and abstraction which allows the viewer the space to impose their own interpretation.  

Katy Sayer Green
www.katysayersgreen.com 
UK

This acrylic and oil painting is part of a new body of work that represents a departure from my recent focus on Encaustic painting. I am still working with Encaustic and this work runs parallel; however, these works draw on the way I use Encaustic i.e. multi-layering, windows upon windows and making visible what has gone before.

“At a time in history, when brutalism is commonplace and where so much is dishonored and where the most foolish sound-bites or even false news carry weight and influence; formats that recognize the world we can touch and feel, hesitation, history, the environment, uncertainty, inclusion, truth and humility are more urgent than ever.”

Tom Levy
www.tomlevy.me 
UK/USA

My recent work has been an exercise of stepping back. When in the past I would always be stepping forward, and pushing my work over the line maybe too much, experimentally and conceptually. Recently I've been attempting to step back in order to know how much further I may need to step forward again. This is how I have been exercising the way I look at the world and how I attempt to come closer to it. Through this the work has become an analysis of experience. Mind mapping is a key phrase when thinking about this work.

Alexandra Pullen
www.alexandracharlottepullen.wordpress.com 
UK

I am a recent graduate from the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, and create work comprising drawings, stories and installations. I will be starting a Masters at the Royal College of Art next year. Within my work I try to create a world in which an individual can think and consider, a place fragmented yet captivating. Through a detailed and intricate web of objects, drawings and words, I hope that a viewer might be led to reflect on, shift and question their place within any number of worlds and realities. Narrative runs through my practice and I am greatly influenced by histories and mythologies that permeate civilization, as well as the great and irresistible capacity of the natural world and the tangled threads that connect humankind.

Yuting Wang
www.anntywang01.wixsite.com/artyuting 
CHINA

Ancient Chinese culture saw the development of a traditional way of making art, which was to take advantage of a scene to express one’s emotions. Throughout history, people in China have adapted this idea to write poetry or create ink paintings. But these painted landscapes are not real landscapes; they are invented by the artists that made them. I also seek to express emotion through painting. Though my approach differs from the traditional one, the landscapes I depict are also unreal; they are composed of illusion and memory. I call them fake landscapes. The fake landscapes that I paint aim to rebuild places from memories and feelings.

Eleanor Langton
www.eleanorlangton.com
UK

Eleanor Langton explores colour, shape, perspective and pattern in her paintings that sway
between figuration and abstraction. Her vibrant and quirky still-life paintings are investigations into the value we place on objects whether they are sentimental, perishable or disposable. Objects, shapes and patterns are simplified and flattened into the picture plane to depict an off kilter perspective. The artist’s collection of mid-century furniture interacts with modern everyday objects bringing together elements of both the present and the past. The domestic subject matter is brought up-to-date by the use of vivid colour and striking patterns that reference the urban environment, mid-century textiles and prints. 

Rebecca Chitticks
www.rebeccachitticks.con
UK

I am a contemporary figurative artist working in oil on canvas and find my work to be informed by
the creeping influence of the digital realm. This sphere that we participate in casually within our day to day life seeps into our unconscious and I feel this influences my artistic practice. Whilst browsing through feeds and skimming streams of data I am constantly soaking up ideas and finding relationships, imagined narratives between disparate threads of information, fragments of pictures, colours and these are used as my references. I hope to incite emotion through my choice of imagery and colour palette. 

I am a lesbian that paints primarily male subjects feel my work seeks to bring balance to the realm of portraiture which is saturated with paintings of women by heterosexual male artists

Martin Hyde
http://www.mdhyde.com/
UK

My intention is for my art work to be multi layered. I want the viewers understanding of my
artwork to evolve over time. I hope the artwork will be enjoyed and that viewers will have some emotional reaction to the work, even if they don't fully understand it. I believe once an art work is completed, the meaning of the art work then becomes the domain of the viewer’s important for the viewer to put their own interpretation on the work even if it differs from my original intention.

John Martin
www.hotpr.biz
UK

It seems a little late to be entering a competition for emerging artists at the age of 76. But I only started painting in earnest seven years ago and you are only young once! Shortly before my 'retirement' after a lifetime in PR, I found a brilliant art teacher and with his help started planning the next stage of my life. I had early encouragement when in 2010 I found a lovely little studio and almost immediately Lloyd's Bank chose me as one of 24 artists for its Art of Sport project. Themed around the Olympics it gave me the opportunity to draw and paint rowers. Equally important, I was able to exhibit my work. Currently, I am concentrating on portrait commissions, usually in oils. I am increasingly exploring ideas and narratives as I move a few gentle steps from my more 'academic' work.

Sol Bailey Barker
www.solbaileybarker.com
UK

Sol Bailey Barker is a British artist whose work ties together historical and sociological research
with an inquiry into the power and symbolism of materials. His work often begins with a journey and months of research exploring landscapes and their histories, excavating and collecting objects. Past projects have taken him to the Himalayas, Colombia, Peru, France and Italy where he has created a number of public sculptures and worked alongside communities studying their folklore and exploring local craft and work practices in order to understand regional relationships to materials. Fascinated by the notion of archetypes and the evolution of power symbols from the Neolithic age until the present’s work is a collision of multi-cultural references, which at its core refers to ubiquitous mathematical principles.

Claudine O’Sullivan
www.claudineosullivan.com  
UK

Based in London Irish artist Claudine O’Sullivan has gained industry spotlight for her distinctive
hand drawn illustrations, featured in the worldwide Apple Pencil campaign. Her uniquely traditional drawing style has appealed to established brands such as MTV, WeTransfer, Tiger Beer and Derwent Pencils. Claudine graduated from University of the Arts London with a First Class Honors degree in Graphic Design. Her adaptable, design focused approach to art is reflected in the diversity of her commercial portfolio and client base.

Ilsa Brittain
http://www.ilsabrittain.com
UK

I have had a strange life and was late coming to my education in art.
I am a painter, which can be a difficult territory to defend. A painting is not just dealing with a pictorial language, it deals with a physical tactile surface too, and as such bridges between a mental environment of imagery and a physically presence.

Currently I am working with the ambiguity of perception. I am interested in how the mind operates as both witness and partaker of the phenomena around us. How our perception is governed by a mesh of personal viewpoints, unique experiences, cultural environment and universal driving forces. 

Jorg Karg
www.jorgkarg.com
GERMANY

The approach to my work can probably be best described as an entirely personal commentary on
our reaction to the present-day function and handling of visual language.

Gerard McGregor
www.gerardmcgregorart.com
UK

My work mainly deal’s with the effects that light, colour and technology have on memory. I am fascinated by how our increasing use of technology is affecting the way we, as humans, think. Photographs and videos are often taken as a way of capturing events in our lives. These images are then used as prompts for our own reminiscing. Sometimes, I wonder if we are becoming too reliant on the pictures we have taken rather than using our brain's natural memory function.
I have tried to express these thoughts and feelings in my work by trying to paint everything as if it has been affected by some sort of digital glitch or malfunction. Each painting represents a split-second recollection of an event in someone's life and the emotions it has unearthed.

Katy Shorttle
www.katyshorttle.moonfruit.com
UK

Katy uses her experience gained working as a medical doctor to inspire her artwork. She uses a
range of materials including sculpture, found objects and book arts to communicate a range of concepts and experiences relating to the medical field. 
Her most recent work ‘Frailty Awareness Project’ communicates a number of experiences of frailty in older people reached the national media and continues to move both non-medical and medical people alike. Katy is interested in taking public health and welfare issues to a wider audience through art.

John Clark
www.leadwhite.co.uk
UK

I paint people. They are usually imagined, occasionally remembered and sometimes they are
models; fragments of bodies that I have found and/or built. Whatever the source, the work proceeds with some urgency as if it were a hunt. Meanings percolate gently through the mixing; attaching and detaching themselves as the arrangements shift.  I suspect that at the heart of the process is a question of identity, allied to a suspicion that the real world is as much a product of desire as it is an object.

Marta Metko Skoczylas
www.wix.com/martametko/artshow
POLAND

I am not a fan of describing my artwork as words tend to overload the nature of simple gesture.
Focusing on human's body I extend Polish painter Peter Potworowski's statement, that the human in painting points out the future direction of art and is never going to be used up. My work oscilates around figurative, scenes tend to escape from 'straight forward' thinking and visualisation. 
In the studio, I seek for an original, light gesture that touches my current taste and never follows an 'idea' as such.

Jaana Fowler
www.jaanafowler.co.uk  
FINLAND

My work explores the possibility of the still life to deliver and present assemblages of familiar everyday elements in a visually interesting and coherent composition.

Chris Burke
CANADA

With my work, I am exploring the interaction of sculpture and the environments in which they are
situated. More precisely, I develop pieces as tools or instruments for the manipulation of light; natural or artificial. Rather than creating autonomous objects, my work exists as a channel for reflecting, filtering, bending, blocking, and coloring light. The light which encounters the sculpture subsequently animates the surrounding surfaces onto which it falls. The piece is the pivotal intervention that creates a juncture between the light source(s) and the registering environment, establishing a dependency on both for activation and manifestation. 

Gillian Hyland
www.gillianhyland.com/photography
IRELAND

Artist and photographer Gillian Hyland describes herself as an image maker Hyland personally composes every aspect of her pictures, a skill gained from 14 years in the visual arts industry. 

Hyland creates supernatural staged images, presented as film stills or dramatic moments. Hyland’s unsettling mise-en-scene are full of sex and desire, sadness and nostalgia.  Her dramatic photographs are based on her own poems, and depict characters in human dramas and isolated emotional situations. Frozen in time, solitary and vulnerable moments are presented in glorious technicolor and timeless sets.

Helena Perez Garcia
http://www.helenaperezgarcia.co.uk/
SPAIN

I am an illustrator and designer. I have published two illustrated books in France (Louna au Musée and Bonne Nuit Louna). Among my clients are Publishing Houses like Penguin Random House, Anaya and Santillana. I also regularly collaborate with magazines and other publications like Buzzfeed. My illustrations are mysterious and conceptual, often depicting characters in surreal situations. My work is inspired by art, literature, and cinema.

Sung-Kook Kim
SOUTH KOREAN

I express relationships between individuals, individuals and society, and amid societies as wholes. I
find these relationships difficult to comprehend, yet compelling. My works are symbolic visualizations of social relationships, feelings, and my perspectives of these experiences, like a pictorial record. They are the process of analyzing and understanding relationships in my surroundings. Furthermore, they are also devices to capture moments of everyday life which I believe are too meaningful to let pass by. The themes come from my interpersonal problems. I have always wanted to be social and to get along with people, though it has always been difficult for me. Social psychologist David Myers said that proper self-disclosure (the extent to which one person reveals himself to another through communication) is necessary for maintaining good relationships with others. In that respect, knowing one's self accurately is important but it’s something still have not figured out. Therefore, I appropriate well-known images and concepts that exist in society and compose them with my surroundings onto a canvas. This is a reflective act and a way for me to see myself, as if looking in a mirror.

Martha Zmpounou
http://marthazmpounou.com/
GREECE

Martha Zmpounou’s recent work revolves around the idea of the portrait as a means and space
of exposure. It seeks to subvert the apparent glorification in portraiture and invoke the fragmentary and the discursive. Collage, masking and layering are deployed to create figures whose identities emerge out of a play of hiding and revealing. In some works, this play comes through with the cryptic expression of the portrayed figure, in some others, with the use of photo-collage, layering and masking. These masked, fragmented portraits touch upon the misinterpretation of the human figure in media and evoke the undermining of the idolized personas that are portrayed.

James Trundle
www.jamestrundle.com 
UK

The work of James is driven by process. He fabricates a situation, which invariably removes his
hand from the final act of making. Capturing the unexpected gesture, a consequence of mediated randomness. This sentiment is particularly relevant when he casts the burrows created by rats. The rodent is unmistakably present, a consequence of its teeth marks being faithfully recorded, thus presenting an insight into the furious excavation. The act of casting the structure creates a fossil of behavior. The object becomes animated by the viewer’s ability to re-insert the animal.
These objects stimulated an engagement with the use of teeth as a means to make sculptural marks. James fabricated a series of tools incorporating his teeth making reference to our departure from the animal binding the relationship between the use of tools by early man and the subsequent dental developments associated with this particular act of advancement. By displaying the tools without handles they remain more elusive, they occupy a space between skeletal remain and archaeological artefact.

Nathaniel Hornsby
www.nathanielhornsby.com 
UK

Nathaniel is a Northampton based artist. In 2014 he graduated with a BA (hons) Fine Art degree
from Birmingham City University. He has predominantly been using watercolours for the past six years.

See the 2017 Shortlisted Artworks here...

Our most recent talk held at Rich Mix proved to be our biggest yet. Over 200 Artists joined our speakers; Sculptor & Prize Judge Briony Marshall, Prize Director & Art Consultant Conrad Carvalho and Artist Agent & Marketing Consultant Caitlin Smyth, to discuss how to grow their art careers. With every talk we do we aim to prioritise giving the majority of time over to the artists who attend to ask questions so their needs can be answered. Below is a summary of the key points from the speakers and the Q&A that came out of this event which we hope can guide your practice. 

DOING PLANNING DISCIPLINE

1.    Growing your career is as much about growing as an Artist as it is living off your practice. It’s important to work out how to balance this withing your schedule and available time. 

2.    There are three things that are integral to the longer term goals: Doing, planning and discipline. Doing here is the most important area, it’s easy to get caught up in too much planning which inevitably slows your career growth

3.    Things that may be stopping you doing are not knowing what to do, not knowing where to start and not liking what you need to do (AKA staying in your comfort zone instead). Planning and discipline can help move away from these road blocks

4.    Try to focus on staying motivated and increasing your courage and confidence. You can do this by: 
Networking with your peers – safety in numbers and sharing concerns will alleviate stress! 
Share resources like studios, exhibitions, discounts etc – lowering your overheads will give you space to breathe
Pay for support – if your practice is what you want your career to be then give it some investment where possible to alleviate time and commitments

5.    Staying motivated also extends to how you mentally approach your work:
Notice when you are finding excuses to not focus - speak openly about deadlines you are giving yourself to peers, make yourself answerable. 
Use positive language – try to speak positively always about your practice with others, don’t focus on works you maybe don’t like any more or opportunities that didn’t work, but instead describe and see them as a learning curve, it’s helped you get to where you are now!
Notice your fears – we all worry about failure but unless you put your work out there you won’t develop your practice, exposure or network. Sometimes you need to notice that fear, acknowledge it and do it any way!

START AT THE BEGINNING BUT THINK LONGER TERM:

6.    Think outside the box – Not many emerging artists will be picked up by large projects or galleries straight away, look towards other avenues to find opportunities like smaller community projects and spaces, speak to your local council or local businesses that may benefit from creative support. 

7.    Create your own opportunities – you don’t have to just look at what the art world offers but create a project yourself perhaps with your peers, these projects will add to your CV and give you an opportunity to interact with the wider arts professionals community.

8.    Don’t be afraid to approach galleries – there is no harm in sending an invite to a show or project you may be part of. The people you are approaching may not be able to make it but equally they may, or they may look at your practice which in turn may create an opportunity six months down the line. It’s all about creating that breadcrumb trail of CV enhancing things that aid the gallery in ‘discovering’ you. 

9.    Peers are powerful – there are less opportunities to support your artistic development in the professional world but it is still important to give this focus. Create a peer group that meets up at regular intervals to discuss new work, issues you may be having, new projects etc with the aim of supporting each other. 

WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW:

10.    Use freebies well – there are a lot of free ways to increase your exposure and audience reach, look into setting up a social media page or two, a basic website and a mailing list. Also explore websites like Saatchi Online who’s SEO can get you higher up in google searches and take the pain out of processing any sales you make.

11.    Social media is a necessary evil – Facebook is great for a two way interaction with your dedicated audience. Twitter can provide a great way for you to engage with larger institutes and galleries as it’s a very public platform. Instagram is currently the fastest growing platform you can engage, correct use of specific hashtags (approx. 5 per post is great any more is excessive) can increase your audience, sharing your work as well as an insight into the artist behind the work can be a powerful tool to engage personally with the viewer. 

12.    Think before you tag –Galleries and organisations probably don’t want to be tagged in your artwork post – save that idea, it doesn’t look good. You would be better focused on interacting with your peers and emerging level galleries and projects, comment and support each other. Perhaps if you attend an exhibition/ event at a larger gallery, organisation or platform etc you could post about being there, this then directly supports them while still associating you with them online – a safer route!

13.    Website and Newsletter – If you’re unsure of what your website should have start with a carefully curated selection of images (not hundreds!) an artist statement and some contact details, if you struggle for time leave dates off of it so it’s not obvious you haven’t updated it. A Newsletter doesn’t have to be monthly, use something like Mailchimp to make it look slick and think about how often you can generate enough content for each mail out, then commit to a realistic yearly schedule – maybe you only send it once or twice a year to start – so what! At least you’re doing it!

14.    Collect information everywhere – Try to swap details with arts professionals and peers you meet and connect with, note down when you met them, where and what you spoke about and follow up with them afterwards! Ask if you can keep them up to date with your practice – perhaps add them to that mailing list. If it’s a more ‘important’ contact keep it to personalised updates not a generic newsletter 

15.    Ask for feedback – Feedback helps develop your practice, gets more people engaging and looking at your work, encourages people to discuss it and respond to you which in turn builds your audience. USE THIS.

16.    Approach galleries softly – Instead of casting the net wide and sending some generic email or copied and pasted text to everyone be selective research who would suit you and contact them in a personalised way, ask for their opinion or feedback. If they don’t get back to you don’t worry about it, people are busy so don’t take it personally but instead perhaps next time it’s relevant drop them that line again and try again. 

17.    A quick phone call saves everyone’s time – don’t be afraid to follow up with people you email, it’s often way less time consuming and won’t get lost in an inbox. It can also make more of an impact – no one calls anymore!

Now we’ve hit the first full working week of 2017 it’s time to refresh your plan and goals for this year. Below Art Prize Consultant Caitlin Smyth has put her top Artist Resolutions to help inspire your 2017 push!
 
1. I’ll do it tomorrow: What is the saying, don’t do tomorrow what can be started day? Spend a bit of time pulling together a list of opportunities, their deadlines and their submission requirements that you can track and possibly enter this year. Even if you don’t enter it’s helpful to see who and what gets submitted and of course who the winners are to help support your knowledge of the industry. You can do the same kind of thing with art fairs and exhibitions if you’re feeling very organised! 

2. Lose the art speak: Anyone else sick of fundamentally juxtaposed, yet simultaneously obvious ideas permeating work yet? Nope I’ve got no idea what you’re getting at either! Lose the overly complex language and elongated sentences this year. The simpler the text the larger the number of people that can relate to it and the more likely they are to engage with your work. Simple language suggests confidence in your ideas. The same goes with the structure of your writing, focus on one idea at a time, you don’t need to come up with 100 reasons to justify making your art, commit some time to working out that one resounding theme at least a couple of times a year. 

3. Look at old work: It may make you cringe but it can also be very affirming to how far you have come and help you assess how your practice; the work itself and the ideas behind pieces, has evolved. Knowing where you have been can help you understand where you are going. 

4. Power in your Peers: It’s time we understood the power of peers. Connect through platforms, support each other, offer feedback, go to artist run events and exhibitions. The more people you know the more chance you have of making valuable connections that will in turn support your own development. 

5. Don’t Work for Free: Now this doesn’t mean only work for money but there has to be a real benefit to you that may come in the form of exposure, connections, payment etc etc. Set your own acceptable parameters based on what you want to achieve this year – if you want to make money focus on paid opportunities, want to widen your network, maybe look at open calls etc. And don’t be afraid to say no if it isn’t right! Keep the connection and down the line it may be useful. 

6. If you don’t ask, well then, you don’t get: Despite how much you want to pretend you had nothing to do with being unsuccessful at getting that group show or being selected for that residency, I’ve got news for you, you do have a degree of control – over your own actions. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there, follow up, ask for feedback, ask questions and connect on a human level with the people you want to gain something from. Relationships can take time to build but all it takes is one person to remember you to result in a potential opportunity. 

7. Small fish, big pond: However, following from the above, try not to over analyse if people don’t get back to you straight away. It’s easy to start slamming this Director or that Consultant because they missed you email or follow up call but people are busy! Back it off until a more appropriate moment and don’t burn any bridges by acting the diva, it will get you nowhere! Keep them in the back of your mind. 

8. Trash Talk is Exactly That: Put your work out there and encourage feedback but also put on that thicker skin and let anything that isn’t constructive wash off. Chances are someone who comments that they’re 20-year-old, one eyed Labrador could have made that was never interested in what you’re doing in the first place, and never will be. Don’t let it waste your time but instead think about how you can make your work even more accessible by explaining it in a different way. 

9. Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Well, it’s not if you’re an artist Oscar! Plagiarism is a real thing but what are you going to do – hide your art in a box and let no one see it just in case? We think not. In a modern age which is increasingly globalised there are going to be artists working in a similar manner to you, equally if you put it out there someone may take ‘inspiration’ too far, but I always find that an idea plagiarised shows through immediately as lacking authenticity and in depth understanding, of course, you don’t have to take my word for it, but you could take it and get your work out there anyway. Be confident in your work and that it is the most authentic out there.   

10. Go and be part of it: It’s easy to get stuck in your art world but don’t ever think that what happens in the auction houses or is exhibited at big art fairs won’t permeate different levels of the industry, go and see, pay attention, look, understand and be a part of the industry you throw yourself into. 

Follow Caitlin Smyth on:
T: @caitlin_smyth
I: @_caitlinsmyth

Can you briefly describe your work? 
I am a painter and printmaker. 

What attracted you to the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize?
The opportunity to exhibit in London.

How did you find the entry process? 
I found it very easy. It was one of the most supportive competitions I have entered. 

What advice would you give on the submission process? 
Take your time. Answer honestly and from your heart! I found answering the questions thought provoking as it made me deeply question why I make the type of art that I do.

How has your career progressed since entering the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize? 
I am still painting and printmaking, but I have been focusing more on my painting. I have been exhibiting locally in Sheffield and in the Peak District where my last exhibition was held at the Chatsworth Estate during their Art Out Loud event.

Last year I was selected to take part in the National Open Art Exhibition at the Royal College of Art and I also won the Harley Gallery's Harley Foundation Prize. This year I was selected for the ‘Small Print International’ exhibition which is touring this year and next, and I was recently awarded third prize in a Poetry into Art competition which was part of the publication of a book called Millstone Grit.

I am presently working on a project called Analysis of the Woods with fellow artist Kay Aitch. This is a year-long project where we use our local ancient woods as a studio to see how they inform our work on an emotional and physical level.

What is the best advice you have for emerging artists? 
Be true to yourself and create work that comes from within you, or that truly resonates with you.

Is there anything you would like to add about the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize?
It was such a rewarding experience. I especially enjoyed the opportunity to write about my work as the piece that I entered was a very deep personal piece for me. I had been grappling with the relationship that I have with my disabled child and yearned to express it visually, so being Highly Commended was very emotionally fulfilling. 

You can find out more about Sarah Sharpe’s online at www.sarahsharpe-art.co.uk 

Can you briefly describe your work? 
I photograph beautiful abandoned spaces all around the world with a symmetrical painterly view and present them as framed artworks.

What attracted you to the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize?
I was keen to get my work seen by a new audience and had been successful in other competitions, so thought I’d try my luck!

What advice would you give on the submission process? 
Be a great editor. Don’t necessarily upload several pieces of work because they fit together, think of each piece of work as a single entry. Also, try to detach yourself from it and think about why you are entering in the first place, that will help to guide your choices.

How has your career progressed since entering the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize? 
I have been published in House & Garden, Aesthetica Magazine and the British Journal of Photography. I've been chosen as a contestant in the Sky Arts Master of Photography show, I won second prize in the Lacey Contemporary Summer Arts Prize and won first prize in the Secret Art Prize. I've also shown my work at the Moniker Art Fair and at the Other Art Fair twice.

My proudest moment was when my work was exhibited at Photo London by Eleven Gallery. I also had a show in Paris and I will be exhibiting at FotoFever in Paris next week.

Did the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize help your career as an artist? If yes, how so?
It helped me reach a new audience who had not seen my work before.

What is the best advice you have for emerging artists?
Don’t be shy to market yourself and if you are, hire someone to do it for you! Support other artists. Don’t say yes to every opportunity as it may end up costing you more than it’s worth, and be a great editor of your work. 

Also, meet as many people as possible. Go to art fairs and private viewings as you never know who you might meet, and always carry business cards!

You can view Gina's work on her website: www.ginasoden.co.uk

Can you briefly describe your work?
I am predominantly a painter but I also use poetry, performance and installation work as part of my practice. The paintings are executed on silk using ink and acrylic.
 
What attracted you to the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize?
I looked at the caliber of the judges and decided that this was a competition worth entering. I was also impressed by the series of lectures that were facilitated by the prize.
 
What advice would you give on the submission process?
Submit more than one piece of work and make sure that your work is well photographed.
 
How did the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize benefit you?
It helps with exposure. I exhibited in Canary Wharf and was then approached by Gray MCA after I was shortlisted and have subsequently been exhibiting with him.
 
How has your career progressed since entering the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize?
I have been exhibiting regularly with Gray MCA and I have undertaken other projects. I had a solo show at the Yahudi Menuhin Concert Hall in November and I will be exhibiting at the London Art Fair and Palm Beach Art Fair early next year.
 
What is the best advice you have for emerging artists?
Keep on going!
 
Is there anything you would like to add about the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize?
It is a good art prize with a high caliber of judges. The inclusion of the talks and feedback is designed to help artists.
 
Find out more about Bob's work online at www.bobaldous.com

​ 
If you're an emerging artist who would like to enter the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2017, you can find full details about the prize, information on upcoming events and interviews with our judging panel on our website: www.artprize.co.uk

​Last week we announced our new prize the Ashurst Prize for Rich Mix as part of the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2017. With this exciting new East London focused prize we thought it would be a good time to answer some of the questions we’ve been asked to help you format your entry and understand what it’s all about.
 
Rich Mix is an independent arts venue based in East London which is a hub for the diverse range of creatives that surrounds them. They not only support the visual arts but run a full cinema programme, live music, dance and spoken word, the list continues! With the focus very much on supporting the community around them and presenting them to an ever widening international audience, we’re really pleased to be partnered with a platform that shares so many of our values for this new award.
 
Below we list some of the questions we’ve been asked by you and hopefully the answers to help.
 
Q. I’ve already entered the prize (before the announcement in November 2016), am I eligible for this new award?
Yes! Your work will automatically be considered for this prize as long as it or you are associated with East London.
 
Q. If I submit information for this award will I still be eligible for the other awards like the Employees Choice, Sculpture Prize and Overall Winner in this year’s prize?
You certainly will. This is an additional award to the Ashurst Emerging Art Prize so your work will be considered for all of the awards on offer.
 
Q. I don’t live in East London, am I still eligible?
As long as your work is connected with East London it will be considered. Make sure to add it into your text where possible so the Judges can understand why the work is influenced by the area or state that you live within an E postcode.
 
Q. How do I make sure I’m considered for this award on my application?
See above! Clearly and succinctly write it in your text, and make sure you tick the box in the entry form at the bottom.
 
Q. What are the deadlines for this award?
The deadlines are all the same. 18 December 2016 if you would like feedback in your submission. 15 January for the overall deadline 2017.
 
Q. I live in another country, am I eligible for the Ashurst Prize for Rich Mix?
Yes! As long as you or your work is related to East London in some way. Remember to mention this in your artist statement or artwork commentary.
 
Q. Does it cost extra to be considered for the Rich Mix Prize?
No, your submission will be considered for all of the awards under the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize umbrella.
 
Q. What mediums are considered for the Ashurst Prize for Rich Mix?
As with the main prize the Ashurst Prize for Rich Mix will accept all mediums excluding performance, video and sound art. Works must be within 275cm x 275cm x 200cm.


We hope the above answers all your questions on this new, exciting prize but if you want further information please drop us an email on [email protected] or Tweet / comment on our social media! T: @theartprize, I: @theartprize, Facebook: Ashurst Emerging Artists

As our feedback deadline approaches for this year’s instalment of the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize we asked 2015 Highly Commended Artist Matt Alexander Ray to tell us about his experiences since entering the Art Prize, what he has been working on and what he found has been his significant milestones in the past couple of years.
 
In 2015 the Judges were bowled over by Matt’s technical skill and sensitive use of light. This coupled with Matt’s traditional style of painting, despite being a contemporary artist, proved to be a very unique and bold entry. On seeing Matt’s work ‘in the flesh’ it was decided that all of the works he had submitted would be exhibited in the Finalists show. During this time Matt took us up on the offer, which is open to all Shortlisted Artists, of sitting down with the people behind the prize. In this instance he met Caitlin Smyth, who works one-to-one with artists to guide them on career development, to discuss where he was at and what steps he could take to move his work into a more visible position. Matt has taken significant steps forward in recent years including gaining representation and exhibitions, he talks about how he’s achieved this and what the best bits of advice were for him.

Q1: Tell us a little bit about you and your practice
A1: I grew up in Abu Dhabi, Singapore and England, and am now based in London. I began my training in traditional drawing and painting methods in 2005, studying at a number of contemporary ateliers in the UK and Europe.
My subject matter covers still life, portraiture and landscape.  I’m influenced by traditional oil painting techniques, but look for compositions that feel fresh and contemporary.
 
Q2: What is the most successful bit of advice you have been given as an artist?
A2: Actually, I think the most important thing has been something I worked out myself, which has been to not rush things. I’d received compliments about my work for years, but I waited until I was really happy with what I was producing, and was able to articulate my objectives and discuss my technique clearly, before really starting to test out the market. And I was taken on by the first gallery I approached.
 
Q3: What was your experience as an entrant of the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize? 
A3: It was really different to any other prizes or competitions.  What set it apart was the focus on developing emerging artists’ careers, through the events and other advice I got once I knew I was a finalist. It was a great surprise and privilege to be a finalist, and then further to receive a highly commended award.

Q4: What do you feel have been important stepping stones in your career?
A4: I achieved gallery representation and my first sales in 2014.  Things really accelerated through 2015, following the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize, with a number of group exhibitions and succeeding in national open exhibitions into 2016.  Once things start moving, it was easier to pick up momentum.
 
Q5: How much importance do you put on managing self-representing?
A5: My experience so far is that most of my achievements have come from pushing things on myself, rather than relying on anyone else.
 
Q6: Regarding self-representing what do you focus on to develop your career?  
A6: I’m still exploring a range of avenues, and with each I’m learning what strikes a chord with the audience. I’m often surprised at which paintings are most popular. So at the moment it’s about being adaptable and open to new things.  Even where I’ve found really successful subject matter I’ve moved on so as to avoid being typecast.
 
Q7: What is the most important event to you in the art calendar?
A7: Whatever else is on, my wife and I will always go to the BP Portrait Award.  It’s where we went on our first date, so for that reason it’s special. One day I hope to appear there!
 
Q8: If we want to see your work ‘in the flesh’ where should we go?
A8: I’m currently represented by the Joanne Parker Gallery, in Battersea, London
 
Q9: Which artists to you aspire to in some way?
A9: Walter Murch, for taking the still life genre to places it had never previously been. Isaak Levitan, for the atmosphere he created within uncompromisingly realist paintings.
 
Q10: What projects do you have coming up?
A10: Right now I’m working on a portrait of my daughter, who has just had her first birthday.  Sittings present something of a challenge!
 

Many thanks to Matt for what we feel is a great insight into working as an emerging artist! You can check out Matt’s website here: www.mattalexanderray.com 

​Watch our blog for more interviews, top tips and articles or ask us your questions on our social media pages!

Interview by Caitlin Smyth

Q1: Which artworks or media or movements are your favourites?
A1: Surrealism.  An extraordinary movement that brought together all art forms - from poetry to painting, from sculpture to film - and enabled for us to reconsider the world we live in with a fresh pair of eyes.

Q2: What do you appreciate or look for in an artwork?
A2: I look for its soul, whether it stirs a known emotion in an unfamiliar way. 

Q3: If realism/traditional is 0 and abstract is 10, what number places your favourite artworks/type?
A3: Whether a piece speaks to me or not doesn’t depend on its level of abstraction or figuration but on its level on honesty.

Q4: Which important/renowned artists are you interested by?
A4: Cy Twombly, Brancusi, Bourgeois, Cai Guo Qiang.

Q5: What do you appreciate or look for in an artist with potential?
A5: An honest display of vulnerability tackled with skills and conveyed with strength.

Q6: Do you have one important piece of advice for emerging artists?
A6: Trust your gut and stay honest with yourself: only you know whether your work is good or bad.

Q7: What has been your favourite art project that you have been involved with?
A7: My favourite project is always the next one to come because the planning phase is always the one with most potential.

Q8: What plans and projects have you got for 2017?
A8: House of Penelope at Gallery 46 curated by Lauren Jones and Alix Janta (7-20 Jan) 
Through The Looking Glass at the Mile End Art Pavilion curated by Alteria Art and James Putnam (8 Mar-9 Apr)
Force of Nature II curated by James Putnam, at the Mile End Art Pavilion (8 Mar-9 Apr)
Fibra residency in Colombia organized by Mia Pfeifer and Bea Bonafini (Jan-Feb 2017) 
Stone carving in Mexico at artist’s Marina Lascaris's studio (Feb-Mar 2017).