The four winners of the 2015 New Light Prize have been announced. The award focuses on art produced by artists based in or from the north of England – specifically County Durham, Cumbria, Lancashire, Teesside, Tyne & Wear and Yorkshire.
Mandy Payne has received the main £10,000 Valeria Sykes Award for her work Broken Brutalism (pictured above). The Sheffield-based, University of Nottingham graduate uses aerosol paints to depict the controversial partial-redevelopment of her adopted city’s famed Park Hill estate. Payne was last year shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize for another work in the same series.
Three further awards go to Newcastle-born Joshua Waterhouse (£2500 Patron’s Choice Award), Harrogate-based Anna Poulton (Swinton Foundation Prize for emerging artists) and Holmfirth-based Emma Lawrenson (Zillah Bell Printmakers’ Prize).
Works by the four artists are on show alongside the 57 shortlisted entrants and 2013 overall winner Josie Jenkins in an exhibition at The Bowes Museum, County Durham. The show will tour to the Mercer Gallery, Harrogate and Panter & Hall Gallery, London over the course of 2016. An additional Visitors Choice award will be selected by members of the public during this period.
The artists were selected for a panel of judges comprising Royal Adcademician Norman Ackroyd, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Arts & Heritage Group Lord Crathorne, art critic Laura Gascoigne, Panter & Hall’s Matthew Hall, and New Light‘s CEO Annette Petchey.
“Given the extraordinarily wide variety and high standard of this year’s shortlist, choosing a single winner was a difficult decision,” said Gascoigne. “In the end Mandy Payne’s work stood out for the originality of its concept as well as its subtle artistry and technical skill.”
Said Petchey: “New Light continues to go from strength to strength. The range of size and media of the work is testament to the breadth of expertise in the north of England, and New Light is delighted to be able to shine such a definitive light on it.”
The New Light exhibition of shortlisted and winning work is on show at The Bowes Museum in County Durham until 7 February 2016
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