Shortlist Announced for the 2023 Robert Walters Group UK New Artist of the Year Award
The excitement is building as we unveil the exceptional shortlist for the 2023 Robert Walters Group UK New Artist of the Year Award.
Now in its fourth year, this event highlights the work of ten exceptional artists who will have the privilege of exhibiting their work at the prestigious Saatchi Gallery in London on Thursday 9 November 2023. During the VIP awards evening, the overall winner of the £10,000 cash prize will be announced. The finalist exhibition at Saatchi Gallery will be curated by Garth Gratrix - an artist, curator and founding Director of Abingdon Studios in Blackpool, UK. Gratrix is the recipient of a Clore Leadership Fellow for Visual Arts (2022/23).
The runner-up will be awarded a £5,000 cash prize, and both first and second-prize funds are intended to support the further development of the artists' careers in the industry.
The 2023 finalists are: Damaris Athene (London), William Bacon (Oxford), Parham Ghalamdar (Manchester), Sofia Laskari (London), Kieran Leach (Manchester), Elena Njoabuzia Onwochei-Garcia (Glasgow), Edward Rollitt (Winchester), Anna Tong (London), Kim Thompson (Nottingham), Pascal Ungerer (Ireland).
Damaris Athene
Damaris Athene is currently studying MA Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art thanks to the Marit Rausing Scholarship. She graduated with a distinction in MA Fine Art from City & Guilds of London Art School in 2023, receiving the Leverhulme Trust Scholarship, and graduated with a BA(Hons) in Painting from Camberwell College of Arts in 2015. She was shortlisted for the Hans Brinker Painting Prize in Amsterdam in 2014, the Clyde & Co. Art Award in 2015, the BEEP Painting Prize in 2018, La Vienisima’s feminist photography prize in 2021, and THE TAGLI 01.23 Collection and Mentorship Award in 2023. In 2023 Athene received the City & Guilds of London Art School Prize for Outstanding MA Fine Art Exhibition. Athene founded the blog Private View where she interviews women & non-binary artists.
William Bacon
William Bacon (b.1993) is a British artist who works primarily with found objects that interrogate the traces of modern culture. His scratchcard works, made from non-winning collections of users cards, contemplate on the formation of pseudo-languages through gesture, repetition and anonymity.
He obtained his BA Hons in Fine art at the Manchester Metropolitan University where he was awarded the 5Plus Creative New Talent Award (2016). Recent exhibitions include; Vignette’s and Pathways’ – Crownpoint Studios, Glasgow 2021 and a solo exhibition at The Cut, Suffolk 2020. He is currently based in Oxford where he maintains a studio practice. He is shortlisted for the 2023 Dentons Art Prize.
Parham Ghalamdar
Parham Ghalamdar was born in Tehran, Iran and currently lives and works in Manchester. He obtained his MA degree in painting from the Manchester School of Art in 2021. Recent selected solo exhibitions include HOME, Manchester (2023); Granada Foundation Galleries, Manchester (2022); and Caustic Coastal, Manchester (2021). Recent selected duo and group exhibitions include Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2023); Bankley Gallery, Manchester (2022); The Whitaker Museum, Rosendale (2023); Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2022); and Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester (2022). Ghalamdar is a recent recipient of UK New Artist bursary, DYCP grant, and Innovative Grant. Ghalamdar’s work is held in the collections of the University Of Salford Art Collection, Government Art Collection.
Sofia Laskari
Sofia Laskari is a young artist who has recently graduated from the University of Arts London. Lately, she has been working on the oil painting series "Body and Flesh", which was shown in galleries around the UK, such as South Park Galleries, RBSA Gallery and London Biennale 2023. She was published in her first magazine "Start in Art" in 2020 and "Art Market Magazine" 2021.
Kieran Leach
Kieran Leach (b. 1994) is an artist based in Manchester, UK, predominantly working in sculpture. Kieran's work encounters elements of every day, online, and 'art world' cultures, which are abstracted, condensed, and often satirized. From playful sculptural forms to modified ready-mades, his work employs a strong aesthetic sensibility and commonly approaches works with a humorous or paradoxical slant. His sculptures are varied, exploring notions such as artifice, language, cartoon physics, and the absurd.
Elena Njoabuzia Onwochei-Garcia
Elena Njoabuzia Onwochei-Garcia’s installations of painted walls of paper explore how the dynamics between people are shaped by what appears to be real and the possibilities of fiction. The compositions, collages and entanglements of historical and popular images and narratives focus on the elements affecting the character’s behaviours, playing out refuted experiences. Once within the walls of washi paper the spectator is caught within a network of relations which are defined by histories that charge their interactions. The immersive triptychs implicate the viewers and their bodies into the setting in order to emphasise and discomfort the connection between the spectator, painting, and subject. The layers of paint and narratives intertwine fables and falsehoods so that allegories emerge and retreat.
Edward Rollitt
Edward Rollitt (b. 1998) is a male artist born in the south of England, living and working in London. He is a recent graduate in sculpture from the Royal college of art. Prior to this he studied History of art whilst working alongside antique dealers and interior designers. Taking his acute understanding for interior space and the objects that define them, Rollitt builds rooms. Historically-inspired, full-scale interiors; scenes of the home, where his emotions and experiences take the guise of fictional characters. They bathe, dine and have tea parties. Sourcing and making objects to furnish these scenes, he then photographs them, freezing the interior in a moment of time. The humanity of objects is a principal interest to the artist and his work encourages us to examine our own relationships with the objects in our daily lives. How do objects become part of us? What past lives have they lived and what of us remains within them when we go?
Anna Tong
Born in Manchester, Anna descends from early Chinese migrants who arrived in the UK in the 1910s; her great-grandfather set up the first Chinese restaurant in London.
Anna’s father’s academic career meant an early life on the move for her; different countries, different schools, different people. Spanning cultures has been a source of inspiration - her upbringing sparked her curiosity in people and psyches. In her work, she explores the diverse subjects of time, memory, science, and the human condition.
After a 17-year career in technology (many of those years at Google), ‘Dwelling’ marks a return to Anna’s childhood dream of becoming an artist. She initially trained at Wimbledon College of Arts, followed by an English Literature BA Hons at the University of Warwick, and postgraduate studies at Motley Theatre Design School. “Dwelling” is her first step into the art world.
Kim Thompson
Kim Thompson is a visual artist based in Nottingham.
Informed by her Black-Caribbean heritage, Kim's practice centres Black British history, generational diaspora and subculture. Via oral histories, community workshops and portraiture, Kim's work seeks to reframe and empower documented Black and migrant experiences, away from homogenous identity and trauma-based narratives.
Pascal Ungerer
Pascal Ungerer is a visual artist from Cork, Ireland. He holds an Honours Degree in Fine Fine Art from the Crawford College of Art in Design. In 2018 he completed a scholarship funded MFA at Goldsmiths University London.
He has exhibited his work extensively throughout Europe - as well as in North America and Asia - including Blackburn Museum, CICA Museum South Korea, Roman Road Gallery London and the Visual Center for Contemporary Art, Ireland.
He has won, been shortlisted and long-listed for many awards such as the Jacksons Painting Prize, Alliance Franciase de Cork Exhibition Award, the Bloomberg New Contemporaries, The Solo Award, The Alpine Fellowship, The Sunny Art Prize, The ACS Studio Prize and the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize.
He has received funding awards and bursaries from several public bodies including the Arts Council of Ireland, Cork County Council, Cork City Council, Culture Ireland and Goldsmiths University London.
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 Journey of Self-Actualization: Exploring the Illusion of Greener Grass and the Pursuit of the Dream,’ artists are encouraged to reflect on the concept of "greener grass" and how it can deceive us into believing that happiness lies solely in external circumstances, artists can explore the idea that appearances can be deceiving, and that true fulfilment comes from within.
Judges will include Robert Walters – art enthusiast, collector, and Founder of Robert Walters Group; Paul Foster – Director of Saatchi Gallery; Michelle Bowen - Director of UK New Artists; Alex Zawadzki - Director and Curator of The Second Act Gallery; Harold Offeh - Artist & Educator; Inger Margrethe Stoveland - Director, Fluks - Centre for Young Art at the University of Agder, Norway; and Habib Hajallie - Artist and winner of the Robert Walters Group UK New Artist of the Year Award 2022.
