Robert Walters UK New Artist of the Year Award 2022

 

2022 Finalists. Photo by Tom Morley.

 

The Robert Walters Group UK New Artist of the Year Award 2022, in collaboration with Saatchi Gallery and UK New Artists, provides a significant platform for artists within the first 10 years of their practice, presenting dynamic artworks from the finalists and awarding £10,000 to the winner and £5,000 to the runner-up.

From a record breaking 1,350 submissions, the 2022 finalists were: 

  • Anne Moses

  • Damien Cifelli

  • Ella van der Straaten

  • Farnaz Gholami

  • Habib Hajallie

  • Jacob Talkowski

  • Joanna van Son

  • Polina Filippova

  • Rodrigues Goncalves

  • Tyreis Holder

Read about the shortlisted artists here.

Within this year’s brief: ‘The Unimagined Future’ judges asked artists to cast their sights forward to submit work which explored predictions of where creative thought and ideas will be in the next decade – anticipating and exploring their own conceptions of what the inconceivable future holds and what needs to change.

The selected finalists explore this existentialism through their own identity, gesture, touch and humour. Existing within imagined or proposed architectural interventions and artist-made worlds and social structures. The exhibition is a reality that is staged, performed, yet truthful. Eyes closed, yet encouraged to open. Voices seeking to be heard in the representational and the abstract - of varying decibels. What we consume and in what worlds we might devour or deviate play out within the selection of works. Not a collective voice, but fragments somehow tethered and in communication across future airwaves and currents.

The shortlist exhibition at Saatchi Gallery (Thursday 10 November) was curated by Garth Gratrix, an international artist, curator and studio director based in the northwest. A Clore Visual Arts Fellow, Gratrix’ work often showcases cross-disciplinary practices in diverse and unique settings. 

 

Tyreis Holder and Habib Hajallie. Photo by Tom Morley.

 

The winner of the 2022 award was Habib Hajallie, with Tyreis Holder taking the title of Runner-up. Read more about them here.

2022 Judges included:

  • Robert Walters, art enthusiast, collector and CEO of Robert Walters

  • Lisa Gee, longstanding Director of the Harley Foundation Charitable Trust

  • Saad Eddine Said, internationally acclaimed curator and Artistic Director and CEO of New Art Exchange

  • Won Hee Nam, CEO of Art Lab N3 and Gallery N&K based in Seoul, South Korea Anne von Freyburg, artist and winner of the 2021 Robert Walters Group UK New Artist of the Year Award

  • Michelle Bowen, Director of UK New Artists

  • Paul Foster, Director of Saatchi Gallery. 

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