The award-winners of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 were announced - representing the best in contemporary drawing worldwide and receiving prizes worth £17,000.
From a worldwide submission of contemporary drawings, 94 drawings by 88 artists were shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 exhibition, and 21 drawings by 20 practitioners were shortlisted for the Working Drawing Award.
Winners
At the Exhibition Launch & Awards Announcement on Wednesday 2 October 2024 at Trinity Buoy Wharf, the four award winning drawings, collectively receiving £17,000, were revealed:
- First Prize of £8,000: Out of Round: An Abbreviated Outline of British Studio Pottery, 2024, steel wire, 170 x 100 x 8cm by Max L Adams,
- Second Prize of £5,000: The 5th Arch, 2023, graffiti markers, drafting pencil on Bristol paper, 145 x 106cm by Owen Johnson.
- Student Award of £2,000: Window, 2024, ink on linen (diptych), 120 x 15cm by Hyeyeon Chung.
- Working Drawing Award of £2,000: Plan for Cato Mural, Year 8, Spa Fields, 2023,
watercolour on watercolour paper, 76 x 58cm by Emma Douglas.
The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize is supported by the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust, and widely regarded as the foremost open exhibition dedicated to drawing in the United Kingdom. The 2024 edition marks the 7th year of generous support from the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust and is the 30th edition of the annual open drawing exhibition.
A panel of esteemed selectors - Mary Evans, Artist & Director of UCL Slade School of Fine Art,
Gary Sangster, Curator & Writer, Co-Director of Drawing Projects UK, and Jennifer Scott, Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery in London - reviewed all works submitted and selected the shortlisted drawings and award-winners.
Max L Adams' award-winning drawing references the Studio Pottery Movement, which in art history marked a shift towards fine art within the craft of ceramics, highlighting the tension between artistic freedom and traditional norms.
My drawings, Out of Round, provide an outline of the Studio Pottery Movement and the subsequent flattening of its forms into icons of regional identity, anti-industrial labour, and domesticity,
Max L Adams was born in 1992 in Michigan, USA, and is now based in London. He holds an MFA in Arts & Humanities from the Royal College of Art (2023-24) and a BFA in Studio Art from Wheaton College, USA (2011-15). His work has been featured in group exhibitions such as Completion in Motion in Peckham, London (2024) and Finding Place in Crawley, West Sussex (2024).
Owen Johnson’s award-winning drawing, The 5th Arch, represents a repeated gothic cathedral door motif. Taken from a geometric circular checkerboard arrangement, the motif is organised in a diamond structure, with the shadows of a late summer evening employed to create depth.
Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1976, Owen Johnson has exhibited widely across the globe. He holds a BA in Visual Arts from the Australian National University, Honours in Fine Arts from Monash University, Melbourne, and a PhD from the Royal College of Art in London.
Student Award Winner, Hyeyeon Chung was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1992, and is currently studying MA Fine Art Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London. Her award-winning drawing is inspired by contemporary landscape and diasporic experiences, with a focus on cultivating awareness and fostering new perspectives with drawing a pivotal aspect of her practice
‘‘I weave monochrome worlds, fusing scenery and memories. My creative process is marked by meticulous, almost compulsive repetition; a ritual of craftsmanship and dedication. Grounded in intuition, it possesses the precision of a printer's hand’’ explains the artist.
The Working Drawing Award celebrates the role of drawing within architecture, design and making processes and was chosen by Benjamin Derbyshire, Chair of HTA Design LLP, a leading multidisciplinary design practice, Andrew Grant, Landscape Architect, Founder & Director of Grant Associates, and Caroline Grewar, Director of Programme at V&A Dundee.
The Working Drawing Award, worth £2,000, went to Emma Douglas for Plan for Cato Mural, Year 8, Spa Fields.
Born in London in 1965, Emma Douglas holds a BA in Fine Art from Middlesex Polytechnic and an MA in Printmaking from the Royal College of Art. She has exhibited in both group and solo shows across the UK including The Jerwood Drawing Prize, Flowers Gallery, Arusha Gallery and Norwich Cathedral. She currently resides in London.
This drawing is the plan for a mural the artist installed in Spa Fields, Skinner Street, London. It is the 11th work in a series of 22 murals she is doing in memory of her son Cato who died in 2010 aged 21 years.
‘‘It represents his 8th Year. Since his death, my work has evolved into a project of recording the marks he made during his life, the places that we visited and the images that linger after someone has left’’ says the artist.
Visitors can discover all shortlisted and award-winning drawings in the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 exhibition at Trinity Buoy Wharf from Thursday 3 October to Wednesday 16 October 2024. The exhibition is free to visit from 11am to 6pm. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated exhibition publication, a downloadable Education Pack devised by Drawing is Free, and a programme of educational events including a Drawing Symposium at Trinity Buoy Wharf in association with The Big Draw Festival on Thursday 3 October 2024. The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 exhibition will then tour to The Salisbury Museum, Falmouth Art Gallery, Drawing Projects UK (Dundee), and Waterside, Manchester until October 2025.
