Shortlist Announced for the Robert Walters Group UK New Artist of the Year Award
After a record breaking 1,300+ entries, the shortlist has been announced for this year’s Robert Walters Group UK New Artist of the Year Award 2022.
Now in its third year, the awards will see 10 shortlisted artists have the honour of exhibiting their work at the prestigious Saatchi Gallery in London on Thursday 10 November 2022, where the overall winner of the £10,000 cash prize will be announced at a VIP awards evening. The awards ceremony and finalist exhibition at Saatchi Gallery will be curated by Garth Gratrix - an international artist, curator, Clore Visual Arts Fellow and studio director based in the northwest. Gratrix's work often showcases cross-disciplinary practices in diverse and unique settings.
The runner up will receive a cash prize of £5,000, with the prize money for first and second prize to support the development of the artists’ future careers in the industry.
The 2022 finalists are: Damien Cifelli (London), Polina Filippova (London), Farnaz Gholami (London), Rodrigues Goncalves (Sunderland), Habib Hajallie (South East), Tyreis Holder (London), Anne Moses (Yorkshire), Jacob Talkowski (London), Ella van der Straaten (Nottingham) and Joanna van Son (London).
Damien Cifelli
Damien Cifelli is a multidisciplinary artist from Edinburgh, now based in London.
His work is focused around the idea of fictional anthropology and storytelling, primarily through the fictitious land of Tarogramma.
Referencing the scale and compositions of history paintings and historical sculpture, he builds a detailed culture; with its own aesthetic, way of living, and understanding of the world, that is at once alien and eerily similar to our own.
His work is a visual representation of this alternative society - documentary images of a new world.
Polina Filippova
Polina Filippova is an interdisciplinary artist, working across interactive art, performances, and video installations. She holds a Master’s degree from the Royal College of Art (2021, Moving Image), and is currently based in London.
Polina uses tools and languages of digital technology to talk about love, loneliness, sense of space, and her body. Her work has been exhibited at the Cynthia Corbette’s Gallery (London), Menier Gallery (London), The Function Suite (London). She received an award ‘Focus On the Female’ as an emerging artist (2021).
Farnaz Gholami
Farnaz Gholami is an Iranian, UK-based artist whose practice encompasses painting, drawing, printmaking and installation. She graduated with Distinction from the Slade School of Fine Art studying MA in Fine Art Painting in the years of 2017-2019. She has been the recipient of The UCL Olive Prize, shortlisted for Bloomberg New Contemporaries, and a finalist in Tiffany and Co. x Outset’s Studio Makers Prize in 2019. She has studied Studio Art at Brandeis University, Boston, USA in 2013 and holds a Graduate Diploma in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts, 2017. Her works have been shown by Niru Ratnam Gallery, Bomb Factory Foundation, and Yamamoto Keiko in London and have been part of shows in the USA, Ecuador, Iran and, South Africa.
Rodrigues Goncalves
Rodrigues Goncalves (b.2000) is a Portuguese-British artist currently located in the UK.
Rodrigues studied primarily visual arts on Madeira Island, Portugal. He spent multiple years working at the internationally renowned Fine Art Foundry Powderhall Bronze in Edinburgh, UK. Rodrigues graduated with a BA (Hons) in artist designer maker: glass and ceramics at the University of Sunderland, UK. Additionally, he was awarded a three-year mentorship programme by the well-known British architect Mike Davies, CBE designer of Pompidou Centre, Paris and Lloyd’s Building, London.
Rodrigues has exhibited internationally. He was awarded Best in Show (Glass) 2022 Degree Show BA (Hons) in artist designer maker: glass and ceramic University of Sunderland [ Sunderland (2022)], Highly Commended Artist New Graduate Review [UK, (2022)] and The 2021 Glass Prize Artist [UK, (2021)].
He made an appearance in Biomedical Visualization, Advances in Experimental Medicine, and Biology [ Glasglow, (2022)], The New Artist, Boomer Gallery [ London, UK (2021)] and The Working Artist III [ London (2021)].
Habib Hajallie
Habib Hajallie (b. 1995) is an elected member of The Royal Society of British Artists, he has been exhibiting his artwork since the age of 19. He looks to empower often marginalised minorities through the exploration of identity within his ballpoint pen portraiture. Confronting socio-political issues within his drawings acts as a catalyst for a discourse regarding the perception of various demographics as being of lesser humanistic value. Specifically, with the disenfranchised often being undermined by mainstream media; somewhat paradoxically reflecting an archaic hierarchy of status, similar to colonial ideologies.
Though born in Southeast London, Hajallie's works are Informed by his Sierra Leonean and Lebanese heritage. He is conscious of representing figures that have historically been conspicuously omitted from traditional British portraiture. Calling upon anecdotal references to portray scenes that are occasionally quasi-surrealist representations, the drawings look to confront lingering ethnocentrisms that are still embedded within modern western society.
Tyreis Holder
Tyreis Holder is an Artist, Poet, community arts practitioner and Visual Storyteller from South London, with heritage reigning from Jamaican/St Vincent. She works heavily in mediums pertaining to installation, textiles, performance, poetry, sculpture and sound. Her practise centres around explorations of self and identity, generational/ancestral trauma and the relationship with the mind, particularly within regards to navigating colonial spaces.
Her primary grounds for exploration explores how textiles pose as poetic language, functioning as a healing device- specifically in regards to trauma experienced by black women. Bringing lived experiences into her practice, she aims to generate conversations around how social and intimate spaces are shaped through race, diffability*, community, class, sexuality and culture. Poetry translates into garments/textiles, installations pose as poetry pages.
*She interchanges the word disability with diffability and disabled with diffabled. The word disabled implies lack, ‘dis’ deriving from latin meaning ‘not’. The constant reminder of lack can have a negative psychological impact. Words have weight. However, through difference, you can find power. She has coined the terms diffabiliity and diffabled – deriving from differ-bility and differ-abled, but has chosen a phonetic spelling approach drawing from the structure of patois.
Anne Moses
Anne Moses is a British artist living and practising in the U.K. (Whitby, North Yorkshire).
Since leaving university with a degree in Fine Art she has been developing and producing work continuously.
Up until 2014 she supported her studio practice lecturing in Art and Design, managing and delivering a successful Art & Design Access to H.E Course in the North East which enabled many disadvantaged adults to return into education and gain entry into universities across the U.K. She is now a full time, professional artist.
After spending time working in relative isolation, she took the daunting (& late!) leap into the intimidating world of gallery recognition. Gaining exposure has been a difficult and solitary journey, however, Anne is now represented in London and New York exhibiting nationally and internationally.
Jacob Talkowski
Talkowski recently graduated from the Royal College of Art with a MA in Sculpture, and received his BA(Hons) in Sculpture in 2018. Throughout he has worked to develop a teaching practice - tutoring foundation students in Norfolk, and working with multiple universities to tutor undergraduates in the greater London area. In October he displayed public work in Battersea Park in a project to rethink the space occupied by the Hepworth sculpture. He has also produced limited editions for House of Voltaire.
Talkowski has also taken part in various panels and events as a speaker, including for the WorkingClassCreativesDatabase (of which he is a member), a-n The Artists Information Company, and British Art Network. He has exhibited across the UK, producing site sensitive works for venues such as House of Vans London.
Ella van der Straaten
Ella van der Straaten is a British artist and 2022 Fine Art Graduate from NTU. Born and raised in Basildon Essex. With a worldview shaped by growing up in what the Echo News describes as 'the worst place to live in the county', she learnt to look inward to understand her true feelings about growing up on a council estate.
The artist finds beauty in the everyday, continuously collecting photographs of moments, graffiti and others' disregarded belongings as inspiration for my work. Seeking out remnants of humanity that people leave behind in order to continuously develop her relationship with the spirit of the estate.
Using expressive and creamy brushstrokes, Ella intends to insert an element of herself into every painting, subtly making the presence of the maker visible in the work. The artist is currently experimenting with ways to change how audiences interact with paintings.
Joanna van Son
Joanna van Son is a fine artist based in London. Van Son was born in Oman to Venezuelan/Irish and Dutch parents, and grew up in China, Russia, and the United Kingdom.
Van Son commenced her current artistic practice while studying at the Bartlett School of Architecture, drawing upon her engagement with both disciplines to paint the ‘forces’ that lie beneath meaning and affect of their structure, revealing the occluded processes that constitute human experience.
From a young age, van Son was attracted to the intensity of bodily representations in Baroque art, taking particular interest in paintings by the master Caravaggio. Recognising the dynamic figurations in Caravaggio’s as well as artist Cecily Brown’s paintings, she developed a vital appreciation for process in her work.
She paints thick on thin unprimed cotton canvases nailed to the plaster walls of her studio. Once complete, each canvas is peeled off the wall and stretched onto a wooden frame. This practice exposes all the strokes and steps she's made, while also leaving a positive imprint on the wall, which becomes the site of an extraordinary palimpsest.
Ultimately, her fascination is with the grey-zones of reality-making that are made visible by art and architecture.
The award set out to discover and champion exceptional emerging artists who are representative of contemporary Britain, and has brought back together three leading organisations – global recruitment consultancy Robert Walters Group, leading arts charity UK New Artists, and renowned contemporary art platform Saatchi Gallery - to help provide a career springboard for emerging artists.
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 need to change.
Judges will include Robert Walters – art enthusiast, collector and CEO of Robert Walters Group; Paul Foster – Director of Saatchi Gallery; Michelle Bowen - Director of UK New Artists; 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; and Anne von Freyburg - artist and winner of the 2021 UK New Artist of the Year awards.
Robert Walters, CEO of Robert Walters Group comments:
“Following on from the resounding success of the 2021 awards we are returning in 2022 with an even more astonishing amount of entries – a 40% increase on last year!
“It is the third year of running this award and we are so proud that such an important platform where we are providing a springboard for new artists has been acknowledged by the Corporate Engagement Awards - where we have been awarded Gold for ‘Best Arts and Culture Programme’ and Silver for ‘Best Collaboration for a Single Event’ - further testifying to the programme’s far-reaching importance within both creative and corporate spheres.”
“The ethos behind the awards is to provide opportunities for ambitious professionals to achieve their potential – a sentiment that is foundational to our business, so we are proud to be working alongside UK New Artists and Saatchi Gallery on this important initiative. We truly believe it will help launch the careers of the next generation of exceptional UK artists.”
Michelle Bowen, Director, UK New Artists adds:
“In its third iteration, the Robert Walters Group UK New Artist of the Year Award continues to unearth a treasure trove of amazing work being made by new artists in the UK, and myself and my fellow judges had the very difficult task of selecting the final ten. These ten artists each have a strong original voice and a unique perspective on the world, which is both engaging and inspiring and highlights the breadth and range of the visual arts in 2022.”
Paul Foster, Gallery Director of Saatchi Gallery remarks:
“Following the success of the 2021 exhibition, we are proud to support our gallery patron Robert Walters in hosting the new edition, in partnership with UK New Artists. The award is an important platform in developing the careers of the UK’s diverse young talent and gives artists the opportunity to present their work to a wider audience, aligning with our charity mission to make contemporary art accessible to all.”