The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, supported by the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust, is widely regarded as the foremost annual open exhibition dedicated to drawing in the United Kingdom. The 2023 edition marks the 30th year of the exhibition project and the 6th year of generous support from Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust for the annual open exhibition. In 2023, the biennial Evelyn Williams Drawing Award is also awarded and brings the total value of the awards announced on Thursday 28 September 2023 at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London to £27,000.
 
The open call for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 received over 3,000 submissions from 1,450 candidates from 40 countries. From this remarkable submission of contemporary drawings, 123 drawings by 111 practitioners were selected for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 exhibition and the Trinity Buoy Wharf Working Drawing Award. 

At the Exhibition Launch & Awards Announcement at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London on Thursday 28 September 2023, the following awards were announced:

- First Prize of £8,000: Jeanette Barnes, New Battersea Tube Station & Developments, 2023
- Second Prize of £5,000: Victoria Hunter McKenzie, Tasha brought us Guinneps, 2022
- Student Award of £2,000: Peter Blodau, El Kobri Maadi, 2023
- Working Drawing Award of £2,000: Ade Olaosebikan, Reconstituted Planes - The Barcelona Pavilion Reimagined, 2023
- Evelyn Williams Drawing Award of £10,000 and solo exhibition at Hastings Contemporary: Isabel Rock, Our Cell, 2022

A panel of esteemed expert selectors comprising Laura Hoptman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center, New York; Dennis Scholl AM, Collector & Arts Patron; and Barbara Walker MBE RA, Artist, meticulously reviewed all if the submissions to select the shortlisted drawings and the First Prize, Second Prize and Student Award.
 
First Prize: Jeanette Barnes for her work New Battersea Tube Station & Developments, 2023, compressed charcoal on paper, 150 x 213cm (above). Born in Lancashire in 1961, Jeanette Barnes is an accomplished artist and educator who has devoted the past 25 years of her career to large-scale drawings capturing the essence of the urban landscape. Jeanette Barnes' award-winning work is a dynamic portrayal of Battersea's development in London, anchored by the new underground station. Battersea power station’s iconic chimneys only just edge into the picture, which focuses on the rise of newer buildings, and the ebb and flow of people.“Drawing is the entirety of my practice” Jeanette Barnes explains. “Through these pieces I want to generate that sense of energy and excitement which is representative of being part of the city. My work engages with the constant development within the urban environment. I am fascinated by the way vast architectural projects are changing the nature and demography of given areas."
 
Much of Jeanette Barnes' work has centred around the developments within the city of London, exploring the relationship between these built environments and those who inhabit them. As much as the work documents the site itself, it also uses the movement of people and the energy of construction as a metaphor for urban experience and change.

 
Second Prize: Victoria Hunter McKenzie, Tasha brought us Guinneps, 2022, charcoal, graphite on paper, 41 x 30.5cm (above left). Born in 1959 in New Haven, USA, and based in New York, Victoria Hunter McKenzie received the Second Prize of £5,000, for her work Tasha brought us Guinneps, 2022, charcoal and graphite on paper, 41 x 30.5cm. A charcoal drawing of a young girl, seen from above, her outstretched palm offering a handful of fruits (Guinneps), the award-winning drawing is a deeply personal and poignant portrait. “Tasha is my niece. She is growing up in an impoverished yard in rural Jamaica” the New York-based artist explains. “Despite the many who greet those “fram farin” [foreigners, coming from abroad] with their hands out, there are many more who will greet you with a gift.” Victoria Hunter McKenzie has been travelling to Jamaica for over thirty years due to family connections and her award-winning drawing serves as a personal and nuanced reflection of her experiences upon arriving in Jamaica. 
 
Student Award: Peter Blodau, El Kobri Maadi, 2023, charcoal on paper, 60 x 40cm (above right). Peter Blodau is currently studying MA in Illustration at Plymouth University of Art. His award-winning charcoal drawings, El Kobri Maadi, 2023, is of the dusty and multi-layered Cairo cityscape, dynamically captured from its rooftops. The black-and-white drawing presents a landscape of flat, barren, roofs with their own worlds of satellite dishes, left overs, and long forgotten items. "Using the medium of drawing, I work directly in front of the subject to express an immediate direct response”, Peter Blodau explains, “the play of light on these hard geometric forms endlessly varying yet always the same becomes another aspect I sought to capture in this series of works on paper."

Born in Berlin, Germany, in 1967, to parents who were both artists, Peter Blodau moved to Ireland as a child and studied Fine Art Printmaking in Limerick. He started his professional life as an artist in Paris, where he made drawings and paintings on the streets of the city. He went on to travel back to Berlin, then Greece, Cuba, the United States, Italy, England, and Egypt. In 2014, he moved to Cairo to lecture Drawing and Illustration at the German University in Cairo. Today, he lives, studies and works in Falmouth, Cornwall, UK.
 

Working Drawing Award: Ade Olaosebikan, Reconstituted planes - The Barcelona Pavilion Reimagined 1, 2023, digital drawing using SketchUp, AutoCAD, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, 59 x 42cm and Reconstituted planes - The Barcelona Pavilion Reimagined 2, 2023, 0.4 technical pencil on tracing paper, 84 x 59cm (above). The Working Drawing Award is a special category within the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize that celebrates the role of drawing within architecture, design and making processes, chosen by a selection panel comprising Ben Heath, Principal, Grimshaw Architects; Debbie Hillyerd, Senior Director of Learning, Hauser & Wirth; and Michael Pavelka, costume and set designer for stage, dance and opera.
 
The Working Drawing Award of £2,000 was awarded to Ade Olaosebikan (born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1991), for Reconstituted planes - The Barcelona Pavilion reimagined 1 and 2, 2023, a digital drawing, 59 x 42cm, and a drawing made with a technical pencil on tracing paper, 84 x 59cm.
 
“I wanted to use the drawings to question the metaphysical nature of a window and see the relationship found between an observer and an object” explains the Bristol-based Architectural Assistant. “Sometimes the fourth dimension is considered as time. I wanted to ask if time can be translated in a single image”. Both drawings explore how three-dimensionality can be expressed in two-dimensions by depicting an extruded version of the floor plan of the Barcelona Pavilion, one of the most influential modernist buildings of the 20th Century, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich in 1929. “In the end the central question is whether, after a series of abstractions, the original artefact is still able to be read by the viewer.”

Evelyn Williams Drawing Award: Isabel Rock, Our Cell, 2022, biro on paper, 43 x 53cm and her exhibition proposal for Hatings Contemporary. Selected by Nicholas Usherwood, Chair of Trustees of the Evelyn Williams Trust, Leah Cross, Director of Programmes and Liz Gilmore, Director of Hastings Contemporary, and Anita Taylor, Director of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, the Evelyn Williams Drawing Award of £10,000 supports an artist selected for the exhibition who has an existing track record and on the basis of their proposal for a solo exhibition or presentation at Hastings Contemporary.
 

Isabel Rock was born in London in 1981 and received this prestigious biennial award on the basis of her proposal to develop a body of work that depicts an imaginative, surreal vision of the world after climate breakdown has wreaked its havoc. Her recent drawings have a strong narrative looking at systems of commerce, power structures, the complexities of desire, objects of value, the fallibility of human nature and the enterprising charm of human endeavour. Her drawing selected for the exhibition, Our Cell, is a biro drawing on paper offering a glimpse into her month-long stay in HMP Bronzefields in November 2022, when her participation in the Just Stop Oil protests to raise awareness of climate emergency led to her being arrested and incarcerated for a month in prison.  

Isabel Rock explains, “As I have become more involved in civil disobedience the more I question our society, its rules and how we inhabit the environment. My month in Bronzefields prison showed me that I don't need all of the things I thought I needed. The experience highlighted the resilience of the human spirit, the ingenuity of necessity and the importance of human connection.” A key part of the artist’s usual practice, drawing became a way to document prison life, to make custody bearable, and to create meaningful connections. “Drawing in prison became my saviour against the monotony” shares Isabel Rock. “We received a notebook in our ‘welcome’ pack and when that was full, I drew on anything I could - envelopes, backs of crossword puzzles, scraps of paper.”
 
Special Commendations were also awarded in the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023, to Sarah Knill-Jones, for Skull I, 2022, charcoal & acrylic on newsprint, and Samuel Owusu Achiaw, Looking, 2022, charcoal, graphite and carbon on paper; and in the Working Drawing Award category to Lisa Marie Gibbs for Nang’s garden, 2022, pencil and pressed rose on found graph paper.

Visiting the exhibition at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London:
Visitors can discover all of the shortlisted and award-winning works in the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 exhibition, now open at Trinity Buoy Wharf, from 29 September 2023 to 15 October 2023. The exhibition is free to visit from 11am to 6pm until Saturday 14 October and from 11am to 2pm on Sunday 15 October 2023.
 
Following its presentation at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London, the exhibition will embark on a nationwide tour to Drawing Projects UK, details TBC; TheGallery, Arts University Bournemouth, 16 February to 12 April 2024; The Arts Institute, Plymouth University, 4 May to 29 June 2024; Turnpike, Wigan, 13 July to 14 September 2024. A fully illustrated publication, education pack and public engagement programmes accompany the exhibition and tour. 
 
For more information about the exhibition and events, please visit trinitybuoywharf.com
 

For press enquiries, please contact Marine Costello at Parker Harris:
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For all other enquiries, please contact Parker Harris:
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For updates on the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, please follow:
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 -Ends -
 

Join us for a series of special events at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London as we celebrate the launch of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 exhibition and mark the thirtieth year of this open drawing exhibition on 27 & 28 September 2023.

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 exhibition will open daily to the public at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London from 29 September to 15 October 2023. A programme of events will run throughout the exhibition and these will soon be available to book. 

On Wednesday 27 September at 4.30pm there will be a special preview for art and design educators in the Buoy Store at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London. This Art & Design Educators' Event led by Chloe Briggs, Drawing is Free, will include an introduction to the exhibition and to the Education Pack devised by Drawing is Free to accompany the exhibition. Free to attend, but you must register with a school, college or university email address and be able to show proof of your role on entry to the event. Book here.

On Thursday 28 September there will be a number of events in the Chainstore at Trinity Buoy Wharf as follows:

11.30am: Drawing Impacts: The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, 1994-2023. This Drawing Discussion will be convened by Artist & Professor, Tania Kovats with speakers including Anita Taylor, David Alston, Elisa Alaluusua, Irene Barberis. More information & how to book can be found here.

1.30pm: Drawing Session with Chloe Briggs. More information & how to book can be found here.

4.30pm: Collecting Contemporary Drawings: A Drawing Discussion with Katie Dyer, Senior Curator Contemporary at Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia and Gary Sangster of Drawing Projects UK, and Honorary Fellow at the University of Dundee. The discussion will be followed by a brief introduction to the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 exhibition. Booking available here. 

6pm: Exhibition Launch and Awards Announcements in the Buoy Store and Chainstore - by invitation only.

For more information about visiting Trinity Buoy Wharf please follow this link.

For press enquiries, please contact Marine Costello at Parker Harris:

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T: 020 3653 0891
 


For all other enquiries, please contact Parker Harris:

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For news and updates on the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, please follow on social media and our website:


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Website: trinitybuoywharfdrawingprize.drawingprojects.uk

#TBWDP23 #TrinityBuoyWharfDrawingPrize

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 received 3,000 submissions from 1,450 candidates located across the world. A total of 123 works by 110 drawing practitioners have been chosen by the two distinguished Selection Panels for the exhibition and are shortlisted for the awards.

The drawings selected for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 exhibition are seen 'in the real' and chosen on the basis of the drawings alone. The selected drawings reflect a broad scope of contemporary drawing practice - including works in a wide range of media on paper and other supports, such as textiles, found books or concrete, as well as moving image works; and are made by drawing practitioners at all stages of their careers, living and working across the UK and internationally.The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 was selected by Laura Hoptman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center, New York; Dennis Scholl AM, Collector, Arts Patron, President & CEO of Oolite Arts; Barbara Walker MBE RA, British Artist.

The 102 drawings by 96 artists and makers shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 are by:

Samuel Owusu Achiaw / Margrét Adolfsdóttir / Elisa Alaluusua / Judith Alder / Thomas Allen / Iain Andrews / Judith Anketell / Brigitte Bailey / Andy Bannister / Matt Bannister / Amélie Barnathan / Jeanette Barnes / Adrian Baynes / Cai Arfon Bellis / Akash Bhatt / Peter Blodau / Kirsty Bogle / Jesús Briceño Reyes / Ann Bridges / Caroline Burraway / Ian Chamberlain / Dongwei (Shirley) Chen / Jade Chorkularb / Gary Clough / Anthony Connolly / Hannah Davies / Matthew Draper / Nisha Duggal / Sarah Duyshart / Roy Eastland / Linda Fardoe / Katy Fiszman / Edo Fuijkschot / Stefan Gant / Joy Gerrard / Diane Goring / Nick Grellier / Elaine Griffin / Susie Hamilton / Georgia Kitty Harris / Harriet Mena Hill / Fiona Hingston /  Ben Johnson / Sharon Kelly / Simon Klein / Sarah Knill-Jones / Jane Laborie / Gary Lawrence / Debbie Lee / Bridget Lesly / Melissa Ling / Saloni Lodha / Derek Lomas / Emily Lucas / Richard Maguire / Tanaka Mazivanhanga / Nicolette McGuire / Victoria Hunter McKenzie / Grace McMurray / Richard McVetis / June Nelson / Rufus Newell / Tony Noble / Simon Page / Alex Pascual / Raksha Patel / Anna Plavinskaya / Julia Polonski / Sandra Porter / James Pyman / Richard Mark Rawlins / Maaike Reimert / Giulia Ricci / Isabel Rock / Nicki Rolls / Sara Rossberg / Heike Scharrer / Gail Seres-Woolfson / Mark Shields / Katy Shepherd / Karen Smith / Lisa Solovieva / Nancy Spain / Robert W Strange / Fiona Swapp / David Symonds / Gabriela Vargas Telaya / Richa Vora / Kate Walters / Emmy Wan / Aleksandra Warchol / Louise Ward / Teresa Whitfield / Hannah Winkelbauer / Caroline Wong / Avis Wu 

      The Trinity Buoy Wharf Working Drawing Award is a special category that celebrates the role of drawing within architecture, design and making processes, has been selected by Ben Heath, Principal, Grimshaw Architects; Debbie Hillyerd, Senior Director of Learning, Hauser & Wirth; and Michael Pavelka, Costume & Set Designer for Stage, Dance, and Opera.

The 22 works by 16 practitioners shortlisted for the Working Drawing Award 2023 are by:

Michael Becker / Daniele Catalli / Sara Choudhrey / Greg Creek / Agata di Masternak / Emma Douglas / Sarah Duyshart / Lisa-Marie Gibbs / Altea Grau Vidal / Nina Gross / Vladimir Guculak / Sandy Horsley / Ben Johnson / Joanna Leah / Emily Mc Gardle / Ade Olaosebikan 

At the Exhibition Launch & Awards Announcement on Thursday 28 September 2023 the following awards, to a total value of £27,000, will be announced:

First Prize of £8,000
Second Prize of £5,000
Student Award of £2,000
Working Drawing Award of £2,000
Evelyn Williams Drawing Award of £10,000, a biennial award to support a selected artist with an established track record to develop a solo exhibition for Hastings Contemporary.

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 exhibition will open to the public at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London E14 0JY daily from Friday 29 September to Sunday 15 October 2023 before touring to venues across the UK. A fully illustrated publication, education pack and public engagement programme will accompany the exhibition and tour. Opening hours at Trinity Buoy Wharf will be open 11am to 6pm from 29 September to 14 October and 11am to 2pm on Sunday 15 October. 

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize has an established reputation as the UK’s most important annual open exhibition for drawing. Founded in 1994 by artist and Professor, Anita Taylor, Dean of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, the annual Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize celebrates talent and excellence in current drawing practice. The exhibition provides an important platform for artists, designers, makers and other drawing practitioners as a catalyst within their careers, and champions the role, breadth, and value of drawing in creative practice today. The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize is supported by the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust, and 2023 marks the 6th year of their generous support for the annual open exhibition.

 
For press enquiries, please contact Marine Costello at Parker Harris:
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T: 020 3653 0891
 
For all other enquiries, please contact Parker Harris:
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T: 020 3653 0896.
 
For news and updates on the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, please follow on social media and our website:
X: @TBWDrawingPrize 
Instagram: @DrawingProjectsUK #TBWDP23
Website: trinitybuoywharfdrawingprize.drawingprojects.uk

#TBWDP23 #TrinityBuoyWharfDrawingPrize

Images, from the top (additional image details to be uploaded soon): 
1) Abortion Rights Protest After Roe Versus Wade Falls (Washington Square Park, New York, May 24, 2022), Joy Gerrard
2) A Happening of Things, Richard McVetis, 
3) Order / Disruption No.77, Giullia Ricci
4) Working Drawing, Michael Becker
5) Replanting Miss Jeckyll's Garden, Fiona Hingston
6) Shift Sleep, Raksha Patel
7) Great-Grandmother's Little Dress With a Collar, Elisa Alaluusua
8) Night Visitor, Mark Shields
 

- ENDS -

The Call for Entries for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 is now open to all drawing practitioners from the UK - and worldwide - to submit their drawings for consideration by a distinguished panel of selectors: Laura Hoptman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center, New York; Dennis Scholl AM, Collector, Arts Patron and President & CEO of Oolite Arts, Miami; Barbara Walker MBE RA, British artist.

L-R: Laura Hoptman, Dennis Scholl AM, Barbara Walker MBE RA (Photo: Chris Keenan, 2022)

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 Exhibition:
The Selection Panel will choose drawings from those submitted for an exhibition to be held at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London from 28 September to 15 October 2023 which will then tour to venues in the UK until June 2024. There will be a fully illustrated exhibition publication.
 
The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 exhibition will launch on 27 September at Trinity Buoy Wharf when the following Awards, with total value of £27,000, will be announced: First Prize of £8,000, Second Prize of £5,000, Student Award of £2,000 and the biennial Evelyn Williams Drawing Award of £10,000.
 
There is a separate submission and selection process for the Working Drawing Award of £2,000. This award is open for drawings by architects, designers and makers. It will be selected by Ben Heath, Principal, Grimshaw Architects; Debbie Hillyerd, Senior Director of Learning, Hauser & Wirth; Michael Pavelka, Costume & Set Designer for Stage, Dance, and Opera.

Founding Director, Professor Anita Taylor, Artist and Dean of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design at the University of Dundee says:
 
“We are thrilled to announce such a distinguished panel of selectors for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 and for the Working Drawing Award. As we enter the thirtieth year of this open drawing exhibition project, we continue to attract eminent selectors and look forward to seeing drawings submitted from across the world to form an exhibition that will demonstrate the vital role and value of drawing within creative practice today.”

L-R: Ben Heath, Debbie Hillyerd Photo by Sim Canetty-Clarke, courtesy Hauser & Wirth), Michael Pavelka

The International Call for Entries is open to all drawing practitioners worldwide, whether they are emerging, mid-career or established. For practical reasons, there are two separate submission and selection processes for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023: for those based in the UK and for those based outside of the UK who will submit as International Entries; as well as a separate submission process for the Working Drawing Award.

To enter the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 please access the entry portals here.

Key dates for the Call for Entries:
5 June 2023:              International & Working Drawing Award Entries Close
30 June 2023:            UK Entries Close
20 July 2023:             Announcement of Shortlisted Drawings for Entrants
27 Sept 2023:            Educator's Event & Launch of the Education Pack
28 Sept 2023:            Exhibition & Publication Launch & Awards Announcement
29 Sept 2023:            Exhibition open to the public at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London 
15 Oct 2023:              Exhibition closes at Trinity Buoy Wharf, then touring to venues within UK
 
For press enquiries:
Please contact Marine Costello at Parker Harris:
E: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.        T: 020 3653 0891
 
For all other enquiries please contact Parker Harris:
E: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.          T: 020 3653 0896
 
For further information and updates on the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize:
Website: trinitybuoywharfdrawingprize.drawingprojects.uk
Instagram: @DrawingProjectsUK   
Twitter: @TBWDrawingPrize

#TBWDP23 #TrinityBuoyWharfDrawingPrize 

ABOUT THE TRINITY BUOY WHARF DRAWING PRIZE 2023 SELECTION PANEL:
Laura Hoptman is the Executive Director of The Drawing Center in New York, a post she has held since 2018. She has been a curator of contemporary art and a leading participant in the international art conversation for three decades. She came to The Drawing Center after eight years as a curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, an institution where she also began her career in the 1990s as a curator with a specialty in drawing. Among the dozens of exhibitions that Laura has curated include Drawing Now: Eight Propositions, a landmark exhibition of contemporary figurative drawing at MoMA; retrospectives of the work of Yayoi Kusama, Isa Genzken, Henry Taylor, Bruce Conner, Kai Althoff, George Condo and Elizabeth Peyton; as well as the 54th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. More recently at The Drawing Center, Hoptman has organized an historical exhibition of drawings by incarcerated artists, a survey of body prints by David Hammons, and a survey of a recent series of drawings by the Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi.

Dennis Scholl AM is the President & CEO of Oolite Arts, a 38-year-old organization dedicated to supporting visual artists in Miami. He has been an art collector for over 45 years, acquiring close to 2000 works of contemporary art during that time period. In the last decade they built one of the largest private collections of Aboriginal Australian contemporary art in the US. Recently, they donated 200 works from this collection as a joint gift to The Met, the Nevada Museum of Art, and the Frost Art Museum in Miami. That was preceded by a gift of 300 works of contemporary art to the Perez Art Museum Miami. Over the last three decades, Scholl created a series of initiatives dedicated to building the contemporary art collections of major museums, which resulted in hundreds of patron-funded art acquisitions for Tate Modern, the Guggenheim and Perez Art Museum Miami. He has served on the boards and executive committees of the Aspen Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, among others. He is an Honorary Trustee of the Detroit Institute of Art and a Trustee Emeritus of the Perez Art Museum. He has been named to the annual WESTAF list of the Most Powerful and Influential Leaders in the Nonprofit Arts three times, and along with his wife, Debra, received the National Service in the Arts Award from the Anderson Ranch Art Center. Additionally, he is a practicing artist and a twenty-two times regional Emmy winner for directing documentaries about art and artists, including films about Tracey Emin, Theaster Gates, Clyfford Still and Frank Gehry. In 2022, he and his wife, Debra, received the Order of Australia Medal for their efforts to bring awareness to and exhibit Aboriginal Australian contemporary art in museums across the United States.

Barbara Walker MBE RA was born in Birmingham, England, in 1964. She studied at the University of Central England and completed post-graduate studies at Wolverhampton University. She lives and works in Birmingham. Her work is informed by the social, political and cultural realities that affect her life and the lives of those around her. Growing up in Birmingham, her experiences have directly shaped a practice concerned with issues of class and power, gender, race, representation and belonging. Her figurative drawings and paintings tell contemporary stories hinged on historical circumstances, making them universally understood and reflecting a human perspective on the state of affairs in her native Britain and elsewhere. Walker was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in December 2022. She was the 2020 Bridget Riley Fellow at the British School at Rome. In 2019 she was awarded an MBE in the New Year Honours for services to British Art and in 2017 she exhibited at the 57th Venice Biennale as part of the Diaspora Pavilion. In 2017 she received the Drawing Room Bursary Award, and the inaugural Evelyn Williams Drawing Award in association with the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2019 and Jerwood Gallery. She has previously been an artist in residence at Facebook’s headquarters in London. Walker’s recent solo exhibitions include Vanishing Point, Cristea Roberts Gallery (2022); Place Space Who (2019) at Turner Contemporary; Vanishing Point at Jerwood Gallery (2018); Shock and Awe at Midlands Arts Centre (2016). Her works have been included in significant group exhibitions in the UK and internationally, including: Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present (2023); Life Between Islands, Caribbean - British Art, 50s to Now, Tate Britain (2021); Lahore Biennale: Between the Sun and the Moon (2020); Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts (2019); Protest and Remembrance, Alan Cristea Gallery (2019); Zeichen, MEWO Kunsthalle, Memmingen (2018); A Slice Through the World: Contemporary Artists’ Drawings, Modern Art Oxford (2018); and The Gallery of Small Things, Dakar Biennale, Senegal (2018).

ABOUT THE WORKING DRAWING AWARD SELECTION PANEL:
Ben Heath is a Principal at Grimshaw Architects and has been responsible for the design and delivery of a series of multi-award-winning UK and international projects: Bath Schools of Art & Design, the redevelopment of Wimbledon No 1 Court on behalf of the All England Club (AELTC), and Bijlmer Station in Amsterdam. Heading up Grimshaw’s Design Technology Department, Ben has a deep interest in the use of digital tools and how they can enhance the visual and graphic communication of design across all project stages.

Debbie Hillyerd joined Hauser & Wirth Somerset in 2014. As Senior Director of Learning, she oversees the development of Learning and Philanthropy projects across the global Hauser & Wirth organisation. In 2022, Hauser & Wirth Learning partnered with 38 organisations and supported 22 charities internationally, launched 8 new initiatives, and engaged with 150,000 learners worldwide. Prior to her current role, Debbie held an associate lecturing post, teaching Critical Studies, Fine Art and Curatorial Practice at Bath Spa University, previously at University of the West of England, Northbrook College and Loughborough University. Her career in education spans over 20 years, during this time she has taught and written on artists’ practice, whilst providing consultancy to many other UK institutions in the education sector.

Michael Pavelka lives in France and is an international set and costume designer for stage, dance and opera. He has designed close to 200 West End, repertory and new writing productions along with classical work for the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company. His work represented the UK at the 2011 Prague Quadrennial and at World Stage Design 2015. He led the Theatre Design course at Wimbledon School of Art for many years and subsequently created the MA Theatre Design course there. Michael co-wrote and then led the MA Drawing [for Purpose] at University of the Arts London in 2013. He is currently director of the design program for Rutgers University, NJ, USA at Shakespeare’s Globe and is author of So You Want to be a Theatre Designer?