Young Masters Art Prize Exhibition: 67 York Street, Marylebone

For this year's 6th edition of the Young Masters Art Prize 2023, we are proud to be presenting to you an outstanding curation of artworks from a talented and diverse shortlist of artists. For more information on judging panels, curators, supporters and patrons please visit our website: https://www.young-masters.co.uk/

Dawn Beckles

Dawn Beckles is a self-taught artist who seeks to weave threads of memory, emotion, and nostalgia into the fabric of her work. Her still life paintings are not merely representations, but rather, they are poignant narratives that echo with the reverberations of life lived and experienced. This work bridges two worlds – the vibrancy of Dawn’s Caribbean roots and the eclectic energy of her London life. This duality becomes a prism through which the familiar is seen in a new light, and the mundane is transformed into the extraordinary. She seeks to capture the often-overlooked beauty that resides within the everyday – the untold stories of objects, spaces, and moments that silently shape our existence.

Dawn Beckles was born in Barbados and currently lives in London. Her work is part of The Soho House Collections at Shoreditch House and Soho Farmhouse Receptions, at 180 The Strand and private collections worldwide. Her work has been exhibited at Hospital Rooms, Hauser & Wirth, London (2022), Inner Space, Sarah Wiseman Gallery (2022) and Wide Awake, KochxBos Amsterdam (2021). She has been shortlisted for the ING Discerning Eye and Sky Landscape Artist of the Year and longlisted for the BP Portrait Award.

Rebecca Stevenson

Rebecca Stevenson’s work addresses the historic forms, mediums, and meanings of sculpture. Using materials that have specific resonances and associations - wax for mutability, bronze for stasis – she seeks to articulate the both the pleasure and the fragility of being flesh. Her work draws on numerous art historical references including Vanitas painting, Baroque sculpture and ornament, and the objects found in early modern wunderkammers. Her practice is grounded in traditional techniques such as figurative modelling and lost wax casting, but also encompasses other transformations, spontaneous or perverse acts of ‘unmaking’, the deliberate disruption of the sculpted form by means of cutting, opening or decoration.

Rebecca Stevenson graduated from Chelsea College of Art & Design in 1998 and the Royal College of Art in 2000. She was Artist-in-Residence at the V&A, London from October 2022 - July 2023. Her solo shows include ‘In Transformation’ at the V&A, London, ‘Delicate Pleasures’ at Fasanenschloessen Moritzburg, Dresden, ‘Bacchanale’ at Collect 2020 with James Freeman Gallery, London; ‘Fantasia’ at Van der Grinten, Cologne; ‘Tempting Nature’ at Mogadishni, Copenhagen; ‘Exquisite Corpse’ at DomoBaal, London. Group exhibitions include ‘Centuries in the Making’ at Bonhams, London and Compton Verney, Warwickshire, ‘Artists’ Conquest’ at Schloss Pillnitz/Museum of Applied Arts, Dresden, and ‘B.A.R.O.C.K’ at Schloss Caputh, Potsdam. Stevenson’s works are held in the Maramotti Collection, the Kraft Collection and the collection of the State Palaces and Gardens of Saxony as well as in numerous private collections internationally.

Hannah Luxton

Hannah Luxton’s paintings are inspired by the late 18th Century Romantic notion that a divine power resides within raw nature. Symbolist and animistic currents run through the works, hinting towards a higher spiritual dimension. Animism intimates the attribution of a living soul to inanimate objects and natural phenomena, and belief in a supernatural power that organizes and animates the material universe. Luxton finds her subjects in her observations of the remote natural world - the sun, the moon, stars, mountain tops, waterfalls, craters and ice caverns - condensing and abstracting each referent into an archetypal version of itself. Luxton’s studio process is one of contemporary manipulation of strictly traditional, age-old painting methods and materials, in which she has mastered oil paint to appear in a variety of guises. Luxton predominantly employs single pigment oils to demonstrate a colour’s character and clarity, and often grinds her own semi precious and rare colours such as malachite and lapis lazuli.

Hannah Luxton studied her Masters at the Slade School of Fine Art and her BA at Kingston University. In 2022, she was elected into the prestigious art collective, The London Group (est. 1913). Her UK solo and group exhibitions include: The Royal Academy (Summer Exhibition 2022 and 2021), The Herman Miller Showroom (solo, 2022), Brompton Cemetery Chapel (solo, 2021), JGM Gallery (2021), Lumen (2019), ArthouSE1 (2019), Drawing Room Gallery (2018). Awards and grants include Camden Council (2022, 2019), Arts Council England (2020, 2018), The British Painting Prize (2019), Dentons Art Prize (2019), The Creekside Open (2017), Betty Malcolm Scholarship, UCL (2012), and The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers/Lynn Foundation (2011). Her paintings are held in private collections in the UK, Iceland, the USA and Australia.

Sadie Lee

Sadie Lee is an award-winning British figurative painter. Her realistic, challenging paintings focus on the representation of women, sexuality, gender and the aging body. Her paintings investigate and identify with the personal politics of vulnerability, defiance and notions of ‘otherness’, with a strong sense of solidarity for her subject. Her distinctive clear, linear style shares much with the heightened realism of German artists such as Rudolf Schlichter and Christian Schad from the Neue Sachlichkeit movement of the 1930s.

She has been selected to show work in many group shows including exhibitions at The ICA, Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art and the Museum of London. Solo shows include the National Portrait Gallery, London, Manchester City Art Gallery, Schwules Museum, Berlin, and the Town Hall Art Gallery, Slovenia. Her 1997 solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery ‘A Dying Art: Ladies of the Burlesque’ was a result of winning the prestigious BP Travel Award. Sadie Lee’s paintings are in private collections including those of Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell; Hugh Cornwell, lead singer of seminal Punk band The Stranglers, and the world-renowned American collector Candice B. Groot

Sadie has been awarded Highly Commended for the Young Masters Art Prize 2023 as well as winner of the Young Masters People’s Choice Award 2023.

Nourine Hammad

Nourine Hammad is a contemporary Egyptian-British artist currently living and working in London. Her work is characterised by meticulously crafted and highly detailed photo and hyper-realistic drawings that explore issues around representation, truth and deception. Referencing a range of sources, from popular cartoon figures such as Mickey Mouse and Pinocchio to inflatable balloon letters from the Arabic alphabet or Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Hammad takes the icons of capitalist culture and historical belief systems and reflects them back at us with uncanny precision and satirical wit. Her pop and vivid images, which often employ trompe l’oeil techniques, are deceptive, and delightfully so. They are also deeply subversive with the effect of drawing into question many of the representational values and attachments to truth we all hold dear.

Nourine was the winner of the Young Masters Lerouge Knight Cross Cultural Award 2023.

Zoe Moss

After receiving a BA Hons in Fine art, Zoe has exhibited in shows such as the Royal Academy Summer exhibition, two years running, Cork street Gallery, Curwen and New academy Gallery and the National open art competition. She has been shortlisted for the BP portrait prize and John Moores Painting prize. Featured in publications such as ‘Who’s Who in Art’, Moss is currently producing various private and commercial commissions. She has had three solo shows and curated two group shows. Moss is predominantly a photo-realist oil painter and pop artist. Whether it’s painting her piece into the Summer Exhibition or Warhol’s Soup Can into a bell jar, she likes the idea of creating works that have such a photographic element to them that they invite the viewer take a closer look.

Zoe was the winner of the Young Masters Rudolph Blume Foundation Acquisition Award 2023.

Ramon Omolaja Adeyemi

Through his painting, Ramon aims to make fleeting moments stand still through the strokes of brush and colour. The View from a Window is a landscape painting of enthusiasm born out of love for beautiful sceneries. It captured the essence of how far the eyes can see from a point of view. The significant feature of this painting is the interaction of nature with human settlement. There is no awkward interference in the structured settings of this settlement.

Ramon was born and educated in Nigeria, followed by a career working as Principal Technical Officer at the National Gallery of Art, Nigeria. He now lives and works in the UK. Recent exhibitions include the 19th Asian Art Biennale, Bangladesh, (2023), London Art Fair (2023), Manchester Art Fair (2022), Manchester Open Exhibition (2022), British Art Prize (2022), ‘Young Masters Autumn Exhibition’, The Exhibitionist, London (2022), ‘Artbox’, Projects Palma 1:0 (2022), Swiss Art Expo (2022), Sky Portrait Artist of the Year (2022), and ‘Beyond Landscapes’ curated by Cotton On Manchester at Saul Hay Gallery (2022).

Natasha Muluswela Muluswela

Natasha’s work takes a conceptual standpoint by integrating moving images, imagination and fine art, reflecting her keen interest on how these three things can intertwine together to tell a different narrative. She uses symbolism of faceless figures to challenge the viewers’ preconceived perceptions and ideologies of what it means to occupy space as a migrant, shedding light on the deep-rooted realities of racism, discrimination and marginalisation in a post-colonial oppressive system. The work challenges views on not only Africa’s political past and present but its potential and future.

Natasha Muluswela is a self-taught, Zimbabwean-born visual artist based in the United Kingdom. She graduated in 2017, obtaining a degree in French and Spanish at Nottingham Trent University. She has been selected for the ING Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries (2021), Threshold, D Contemporary Gallery, London (2021), The Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize 2019, London, (2019), and Black History Month’, at Uber, London (2019). In 2022 she was awarded the ACME Alternative Pathway Award, receiving a six-month long studio residency, materials, and a bursary from ACME.

Natasha Muluswela was awarded Highly Commended for Young Masters Emerging Woman Artist Award 2023.

Dola Posh

Dola’s series, ‘Omo mi’ in Yoruba, meaning “my child”, delves into the profound and transformative journey of becoming a new mother. Through this body of work, she captures the delicate and life-changing experience that motherhood brings. Reflecting on her own childhood, she developed an appreciation for the beauty inherent in her Nigerian tradition and culture. ‘Omo mi’ serves as a testament to the universal experiences of new mothers while embracing the distinct cultural influences that shape her identity. We are invited to join the artist on this intimate and transformative journey as we celebrate the strength, resilience, and love that define the delicate yet life-changing role of being a mother with inspirations from our past generations.

As a black Yoruba woman, Dola Posh finds inspiration in nature, culture, and tradition. She is passionate about capturing the essence of everyday life through photography and self-portraiture, and is committed to fostering creativity in others and sharing artistic ideas. Her exhibitions include Onwe Press ‘Daughters of Nri’ (2019), Tower Hamlets and Alternative Arts, ‘Beauty and Power’ (2021 and 2022), and Artichoke Trust ‘The State We’re In’, #TheGallery Season 2 (2023).

Alicia Paz

Alicia Paz’s work is inspired by the decorative arts (tapestry, wallpaper, Delft plates, azulejos, jewellery and so on), history books, botanical drawings and geographical and maritime maps. She paints portraits of women on canvas. Who are they? Women who matter to Alicia Paz. Women she admires, who have supported her, who inspire her or who move her. They are her friends, members of her family, anonymous women and famous women (politicians, scientists, poets, authors, theoreticians, activists, singers, artists). From one portrait to the next there is Nina Simone, Virginia Woolf, Marie Curie, Sonia Delaunay, Elvia Carrillo Puerto, Berthe Morisot, Billie Holiday, Mary Shelley, Mary Seacole, and many others. Alicia Paz brings together women from different eras, cultures, social classes, and geographies. Together (juntas) they are the protagonists of their own history (herstory). Within an organic and localised visual reflection, Alicia Paz brings together the geographies, temporalities, experiences and struggles of the protagonists represented. Far from an eternal patriarchal representation where women are considered as objects, sensual, silent and docile, here women actively express themselves and claim a shared history.

Click the link below to read more about the each of the women in these portraits:

https://www.periferia-projects.com/juntas/

Alicia Paz recently presented a solo exhibition titled ‘Juntas’ at the Maison de l’Amérique latine inParis, and at FRAC Ile de France, Château de Rentilly, as part of the group exhibition ‘Le Cabaret du Néant’ (2020), ‘Life Stories’, a group exhibition at Chatsworth House, UK, (2021). An Arts Council-funded research and development project in 2021 culminated in two solo exhibitions in UK institutions: ‘Río y Mar’ (‘River and Sea’) at the Beecroft Gallery in Southend-on-Sea, and ‘River Makers’ at 20-21 Visual Arts Centre in North Lincolnshire, UK. In August 2017 Paz unveiled a public sculpture commission at Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, titled Insel der Puppen (Island of Dolls), in steel and enamel. Paz graduated from U.C. Berkeley, ENSBA-Paris, Goldsmiths College, and Royal College of Art, London.

Alicia is the overall winner of Young Masters Art Prize in 2023.

Lucy Smallbone

Nothing in our lives except big milestones are documented as much as holidays. Photos, film and other people’s narrative often distorts them. So memories become an ever-changing truth, peppered with strong feelings and senses. You probably can’t remember the entirety of a view, but you might remember the sunlight being so bright that you had to shield your eyes, or the smell of rain on hot terracotta. It is this interplay of sensual memory that Lucy explores in her work; over saturating colour or distorting marks to try and stir memories. There is also a beauty in trying to remember something and paint it, because at some point paint and the art of painting takes over. Like memory, in painting things continously slip and change.

Lucy Smallbone studied painting at City and Guilds, followed by a Masters in Fine Art at The Slade School of Fine Art, London. Her work has been presented at solo exhibitions at Fiomano Clase, London (2018 and 2021), HSBC, London (2018), and The Space Station Gallery, London (2017). Notable group exhibitions include ‘Wish You Were Here’, Tag Fine Art (2023), ‘A Slash of Blue’, Gerald Moore Gallery (2023), ‘Landscape Artist of the Year Exhibition’, Clarendon Fine Art (2018), and the Ingram Purchase Prize, Cello Factory, London (2018). She has also received notable scholarships and awards, including the Duveen Travel Prize to Chernobyl (2015), The Haworth Trust Award for Painting (2010) and The David Ballardie Travel Award (2009)

Joshua Donkor

Joshua Donkor is a Ghanian-British painter whose work uses portraiture as a tool to subvert monolithic portrayals of Black identity. Donkor approaches portraiture as a collaborative exercise between him and his sitters. Although the subject matter of Donkor’s paintings is deeply personal and completely idiosyncratic, often having to deal with specific African roots and the individual experiences specific people have had growing up Black in Western societies, everyone can respond deeply to the images. Somehow, widely relatable experiences are communicated through the specificity of the images.

Donkor’s work has been exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Exhibition (2023), RBA Rising Stars, (2023, Solo Show). I have more souls than one, Bankside Hotel, London (2023), The Discerning Eye (2022), Skin and Masks, The Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, (2022), Bath Society of Artists Exhibition, The Victoria Gallery, (2022), Souls and Spirits, Voltz Clarke Gallery, New York (2022), and Portrait Artist of the Year: The Exhibition, The Compton Verney Gallery (2022). His commissions include Tate Collective and The National Library of Wales. He has been selected for the Holburne Artist Residency and The Signature Art Prize.

Megan Baker

Unfolding through layers of impasto, Megan Baker’s oil paintings suggest an ever-changing state of being, where fragmented and gestural figures are continually interrupted by the immediacy of the paint. Focusing on the physicality of the medium itself, Baker’s practice is centred on the way time can be experienced through painting. Baker uses paint as a way to expand and extend time in a world where everyday encounters feel so instant and condensed. In turn, the perception of time shifts and evolves as one is absorbed by the search and discovery of the next hidden detail. Multiple dualities collide in Baker’s practice: abstraction and figuration, the real and the imagined, the hidden and found, all coexist in the pictorial surface. Paint continually moves back and forth, located in this in- between state where nothing seems fixed. This plurality of themes exhibited in Baker’s work is reflective of the artist’s wide array of references, spanning from the films of Andrei Tarkovsky to the writings of Joan Didion to the masterpieces of Tiepolo and Titian.

Megan Baker studied BA (Hons) Fine Art, Central Saint Martins. Exhibitions include ‘Where the Ground Meets the Sky’, solo exhibition at Gillian Jason Gallery, London (2022), ‘Beyond Figuration: Then and Now’, Gillian Jason Gallery, (2023), ‘Homecoming’, Gallery 2, Tel Aviv, (2023), ‘Reclaiming the Nymph: A Force of Nature’, Gillian Jason Gallery,(2022), ‘A Land Where Other People Live’, Sixty Six, London, (2022), Art on a Postcard Auction, All Bright Mayfair, London (2020), The Hix Award 2019, Hix Art, Tramshed, London, (2019), Clyde and Co Art Award, London (2018).

Olga Morozova

Olga Morozova deliberately chose the palette of Fauvism; all of her work is life in active colourism. Mysterious fusion with her native city of Kyiv creates a sublime energy that is transferred to the canvas. For Olga, the interaction of spots and dots, the movement of colour plasticity, and the organisation of the flow of colour are important.

Since the beginning of the Ukraine War, texts have appeared in these works. Excerpts of the texts of the Radzivyli Chronicle about the fortification of Kyiv in the 12th century, or the prayers chanted on the walls of Sophia of Kyiv intertwine with texts warning about air raids that we read every day on our smartphones. They were already reflected in the subconscious. In general, the canvas is a fabric of time where all times coexist.

Morozova has represented Ukraine at ‘100 Women Artists around the World’ at Z-art Gallery, Dubai (2019), and at the 19th Art Asian Biennale, Bangladesh (2021). She has exhibited widely in Ukraine and across Europe. In the UK her work was presented as part of the exhibition ‘Flowers from the Frontline’ at the Garden Museum, London (2022). Her work is on display permanently at the National Academy of Arts and Architecture in Kyiv, and held in the collections of the National Reserve Sophia Kievska, Museum of Kyiv History, Museum of Contemporary Art (Huesca, Spain), and private collections across the world.

Rosie Emerson

Rosie Emerson creates unapologetically feminine works on paper. Her figures draw reference from archetypes old and new, from Artemis to the modern-day super model. She refuses to shy away from aesthetics and fully embraces arts ability to both transport and bring about a sense of wonder. Inspired by her love of theatre, performance, shrines and rituals, she uses lighting, costumes, set and prop making, alongside printmaking and painting to create other worldly one off pieces. Her photography is inspired by both the drama of the baroque, and ethereal qualities of Pre Raphaelites works. Other important influences include late medieval and renaissance paintings, artists Max Ernst and Joseph Cornell and magical realist writer Angela Carter.

Emerson’s work is widely collected and exhibited both in the UK as well as internationally, through galleries, art fairs and museums. She recently created works for The Dorchester Vesper bar and created a Guinness world record by making the world’s largest Cyanotype photograph, the final artwork measuring 46.8 sq metres. She has been awarded the Bridgeman Studio Award and took part in the Young Masters Art Prize, 2015 and 2022. Her work has also been featured in Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Another Magazine, The Financial Times Magazine and The Sunday Times Style Magazine.