Winners 2019

Overall Winner 2019
Sophie Peters

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

Sculpture Winner 2019
Ruth Brenner

Ruth Brenner is a Scottish sculptor and installation artist living and working in Newcastle upon Tyne. She is currently engaged in a practiceled 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 and 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 with her bodily dimensions such as her 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 while giving the embodied practice of making theoretical underpinning.

See more at www.ruthbrenner.co.uk

Photography Winner 2019
Brendon Kahn

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 finishing line. Working in the medium of photography enables Brendon to unify a world of opposition where tension is unconsciously programmed.

See more at www.brendonkahn.com

Choice Winner 2019
Roberto Grosso

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

New Media Winner 2019
Thomas Webb

Thomas Webb is a British born new media artist living in London, UK. His practice orbits 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 www.webb.site