Showcasing The Talents of 13 Prizewinning Artists
By The Box
Posted on 26 March, 2021
It’s never too late to add a new skill to your résumé. And these spunky young painters proved it by busting out their metaphorical paintbrushes and giving metaphorical painting a good college try. Despite the art-supply shop being closed and Amazon failing to stock their favourite budget-brand paint, these artists proved that innovation is cutting edge! Though, currently, there is nowhere to exhibit their fine works, they showed that any rational artist would continue to produce artwork when all the galleries are shut. Without them how, oh how, could we have continued to enjoy that age old tradition of staring at crusty old paint on a fine day like today? In my opinion, these are not only the best paintings of 2021, but the best paintings EVER!
Winner of The Best Painting on Google
The Best Painting on Google
Artist Lizzie McLuckie was born in Dorset and currently studies at The University of Brighton on the Fine Art: Critical Practice Degree course. Demystifying the culturally subjective nature of taboo, her practice challenges the controversy of subjects such as mental health, abortion and feminism by reimagining them as approachable, digestible and normalised. In her latest piece, she blurs the line between artist and curator by casting curatorial delegation as a process of the art making. Challenging the status of classical Fine Art, she demonstrates the subjectivity implicit in viewing and enjoying art.
Winner of The Best Painting Covered in Useless Numbers
The Realm
(Acrylic on Canvas)
Toronto born artist Trinity Davoren joined The University of Brighton’s Fine Art: Critical Practice Degree course straight out of high school. Utilizing a variety of mediums, she encourages the audience to engage with her work by employing interactive elements, and in doing so challenges the notion that Fine Art is sacrosanct. By developing a practice centered around art as experience, she elicits a variety of audience responses that are as abject as they are varied. Creating discourse around notions of data privacy in her latest piece, she generates discomfort by simulating the permanence of retained online data, and the discomfort of knowing your data has proliferated without privy consent.
Winner of The Best One-Sided Food Fight
Spit Painting
(Tomato Ketchup, Blueberry Muffin, Tomatoes, Chocolate Spread, Breadsticks on Canvas)
London born artist Ela Ruiz completed a Foundation Degree at Oaklands College before embarking on a Fine Art: Critical Practice Degree at The University of Brighton. Investigating the effect that social constructs have on the body and mind, her practice explores of the connection between the material body and ephemeral soul. In her latest piece, she takes inspiration from both her Turkish heritage and diet culture to satirize the notion of self-worth being derived from appearance. Commenting on how society has perpetuated a sense of guilt towards consuming a necessity, food, she reveals that happiness and self-fulfilment is not skin deep.
Winner of The Best Painting You’ll Never See
A View of Seven Sisters from Birling Gap
Liverpudlian artist Katy McCaffrey joined the Fine Art: Critical Practice Degree course at Brighton University after completing a Foundation Diploma at Carmel College. Her work explores the innately immaterial process of art making by physically manifesting representative aspects of the creative process. While maintaining the authority of the abstractions which inspires her work, she bestows physicality upon the intangible, to allow it to exist manifestly. In her latest piece, she investigates the process through which a painting is created, prioritising recognition of this planning and preparation over the presentation of the painting in and of itself.
Winner of The Most Expensive Reproduction
Pompeii, $42,857 ; Abstract Painting No.5, $140,000 ; White Center, $9,000,000
Northamptonshire born artist Calum-Louis Adams studied at Banbury College before joining the Fine Art: Critical Practice Degree course at The University of Brighton. Steeped in humour and irony, their work dissects and appropriates the minutia of pop culture, politics and philosophy to materialise those aspects which previously remained abstract. By exploring the duality of symbolic and market value, they critique and deconstruct the theory of ‘value’ by asking how far, exactly, does an artist’s aura extend? In their latest piece, they conceptualise, parody and reimagine reproduction value as a function of cultural commentary.
Winner of The Best Collaborative Digital Artwork Which Uses Non-Fungible Tokens to Attribute Authorship
Participation Station
Click on the image below to access the perpetual non-fungible token generator!
Wiltshire-born artist Kofi Sherry graduated with a Foundation Degree from Leeds College of Art before joining the Fine Art: Critical Practice Degree course at The University of Brighton. Seeking to both commentate on and satirise a variety of 20th Century philosophical and historical schools of thought, her work is as varied in materiality as it is broad in theoretical footing. By omitting ideological convictions from her work, she aims to have the viewer face dogmatisms in their belief system, as she questions and re-thinks her own. In her latest piece, she re-envisions the recently popularised notion of digital art as non-fungible tokens.
Winner of The Best Performance That Will Never Be Seen
The Memory
Welsh-born artist Beth Cooperwhite studied at London Metropolitan University before joining the Fine Art: Critical Practice Degree course at The University of Brighton. Utilizing colour psychology to convey an unspoken narrative, her work encompasses themes of experience, emotion and mental wellbeing. Allowing the subconscious mind to take over, her expressive work explores how the body can be used as both tool and printing plate. Connecting to the subconscious mind and allowing the body to freely flow, she captures the movement of the body in her latest piece, making a memory of an invisible performance that has been influenced by subconscious self-expression.
Winner of The Best Painting That Is, Well It’s Not, Well What It’s Trying To Say, It’s Trying To, What I Mean Is It’s Making A Comment On…
Artist Interview
Scottish born artist KAIJA joined The University of Brighton’s Fine Art: Critical Practice Degree course after studying at Buckinghamshire New University. Examining the position of the worker’s body within labour, the female body within patriarchal conditions, as well as the artist’s body within performance, her work explores the relationship between all these bodies and their identities; the varying ways they are represented, and how to represent them as one. Her elusive latest piece seems not to have been documented and despite extensive searches, I can’t seem to find it anywhere! There is however a video of the artist talking about the piece.
The First Washing Machine to Win a Painting Prize
‘Untitled no. 12-14’, collaboration: Lavamat 666000, Fairy Non-Bio Pods, Dylon Colour Catcher Laundry Sheets, mixed clothing, Lily Purbrick.
German produced Lavamat 66600 moved to Brighton after being manufactured in Thailand in 2016. Discovering their true passion of painting after taking on the role of lead clothes-washer, their practice challenges the notion that painting is a solely human endeavour. Collaborating with inanimate and animate things, their work highlights the role that co-creation has in manufacturing Fine Art. Therefore, it is incumbent on me to attribute authorship of their latest work to the labour of their manufacturer; the makers of the colour catchers which allow them to create their work; the clothes which provide excess dye; the detergent; and the electricity that powers them.
Winner of The Best Code Painted by Code
Paint by Numbers
London-born artist Amy Spragg studies at The University of Brighton on the Fine Art: Critical Practice Degree course. Her practice can be understood in the context of New Media and addresses the evolving relationship between humans and machines, asking whether humans are more mechanical than they care to admit. Often drawing parallels between the two, she asks what this relationship reveals about human nature and what it means for us as humans to exist in digital space. Her latest piece, co-authored by herself and an AI, raises questions of human autonomy and authorship.
Winner of The Most Expensive Mental Breakdown
For Sale
Focusing his artistic practice on themes of humanity and ecological crisis, Devon–born artist Edward Pelling overcame exceptional adversity to gain his place on the Fine Art: Critical Practice Degree course at The University of Brighton. Deviating from his trademark themes in his latest piece, he materialises the mentally damaging process that many artists and workers are forced to go through to create their work– without sugar-coating it. Expanding on themes of consumerism and commodification, he commentates that what’s seen on the surface is all that appeals in the market to the customers, not the back story.
Winner of The Best Painting of a Hot-Ass-Feminist-Mess
Yoni Bomb
After completing a Foundation Diploma at Brighton MET, London-born artist Elizabeth Blake joined the Fine Art: Critical Practice Degree course at The University of Brighton. Her work explores internal conflicts that arise from operating as a woman in a society that both idolizes and rejects them. Demonstrating that conflict manifests itself within women’s physicality; in their bodies; in their gender expression; and in the space they inhabit. She demonstrates that women’s metaphysics have become a battleground for political discourse and external scrutiny. In this latest work, she highlights the juxtaposition between palatable representations of performed femininity and female identity.
Winner of The Best Decay of a Famous Painting
Born on the outskirts of East London in 1999, artist Molly Marshall’s work takes inspiration from ephemeral themes of bodily decomposition and impermanence. Her highly detailed realist and surrealist work takes inspiration from the anatomy of the human body, with a focus on the viscera of the internal organs. In exploring how disease and decomposition transforms the body, she commentates on the transitory nature of the body as materially manifest. Her latest piece investigates the fame and antiquity of famous- and infamous- paintings by subjecting them to decay, as if the scene therein was mercurial.
