The ACS Studio Prize has returned in 2018 to offer one student or recent graduate a £6,000 prize to help secure studio space in a UK city of their choice.

Five finalists have been chosen from a national open competition which attracted almost 330 submissions, marking a huge increase in applications from the inaugural Prize in 2017.

This year judges were Lady Bridgeman CBE, founder of the Artists’ Collecting Society (ACS), and renowned artists Eileen Cooper RA and Rob & Nick Carter who deliberated over an initial longlist of 32 artists from throughout the UK and Europe.

The winner of the prize will be announced mid-September.

Quotes from Judges:

“The overall standard of applications was very high indeed and the range of work impressive, with great breadth of practice evident. This made the selection both hugely enjoyable and very difficult. I would have like the selectors to be giving out at least half a dozen prizes! I particularly responded to the ambition of the Rebecca Harper's works in scale and subject matter, together with her warmth and observations, the paintings had real depth. I really felt connected to the world she portrayed.” Eileen Cooper RA

“It was a huge honour and a privilege to be part of the ACS judging alongside Lady Bridgeman and Eileen Cooper RA. The standard of applicants was incredibly high, and the shortlist was picked from a range of media.” Rob & Nick Carter

“I was absorbed by the work of the shortlisted artists: by the evocative use of colour in Stella Kapezanou’s paintings, the maturity of Sara Lavelle’s portraiture, the intelligence and wit expressed in Anne Griffith’s work, the skill in Jamie Fitzpatrick’s engaging sculptural installations, and the dreamy, ambient quality of Rebecca Harper’s paintings.” Lady Bridgeman CBE

The Finalists

Anne Griffiths – Multi-disciplinary work revolving around cultural/historical boundaries. Lives and works in Oxford, UK. Graduated from Oxford Brookes. ‘The Taxonomy of the Cornflake’ exhibited and sold at the Royal Academy 250th Summer Exhibition in 2018. “My practice revolves around the processes of museology. Collecting, categorising, repairing, research and display and I am hoping to develop work which is informed by, and responds to, the collections in museums, historic buildings and public institutions. In exploring these processes, the modest, mundane, imperfect or impermanent is celebrated.”

Jamie Fitzpatrick – Large-scale sculptural work. Lives and works in London, UK. Graduated from the Royal College of Art. “My work often takes the form of large figurative sculptures that assume the role of childish, deteriorating monuments of symbolic authority and power. The works are all about surface, they are quite literally a facade, and the footprints, fists and deep finger gouges in the material are all records of that act of making.”

Rebecca Harper – Paintings observed from life. Lives and works in London, UK. Graduate of UWE Bristol (2011), the Royal Drawing School (2014) and Turps Art School (2018). “Engaged with representation, I uphold a practice of reconstructing visual appearances; memories, events, beliefs, dreams, drawing from life, memory and mediated imagery, whereby seamless, sometimes fictional fragmentations are rearranged as plausible happenings.”

Sara Lavelle – Figurative painting and portraiture. Lives and works in London, UK. Graduated from Brighton University. “My work focuses on painting and drawing the figure. This derives out of a deep fascination with the nature of being from a psychological, spiritual and philosophical standing. I want to be able to access the authentic experience of how it feels to be human. I believe that individuals are increasingly becoming detached from their essence, especially with the rise of social media and virtual reality. All around me I observe how identity is presented rather than experienced and embodied.”

Stella Kapezanou – Highly stylised painting of implausible scenes. Lives and works in London, UK. Graduated from Athens School of Fine Arts and Chelsea College of Arts. “As a painter I aim to compose complex, ironic and sometimes obscure works which draw their inspiration from capitalistic and materialistic Western societies. My point of departure is the very ‘aesthetics of consumption’, and therefore I draw my images from the ‘everyday’ life of people and the relations which bind them with objects, places and times. I am intrigued by subjects that are not considered ‘high art’ but rather ‘ordinary’.”