The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 to tour UK

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 is currently on show at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London E14 0JY. All the shortlisted and award-winning drawings can be seen at the exhibition - which finishes on Wednesday 16 October 2024 - prior to the exhibition touring to Salisbury, Falmouth, Dundee, and Manchester - until October 2025.

View of The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 exhibition
first prize winner on extreme right

The Exhibition

The exhibition at Trinity Buoy Wharf is free to visit from 11am to 6pm. 

Another view of The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 exhibition

Future Venues

• The Salisbury Museum (26 October 2024 - 26 January 2025), The Kings House, 65 The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EN
• Falmouth Art Gallery (1 February - 10 May 2025) Municipal Buildings, The Moor, Falmouth TR11 2RT
• Drawing Projects UK (14 May - 10 August 202 Dundee DD1 1EX
• Manchester Waterside Gallery (18 August - 11 October 2025) 1 Waterside, Sale M33 7ZF

From a worldwide submission of contemporary drawings

• 94 drawings by 88 artists were shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 exhibition.
• 21 drawings by 20 practitioners were shortlisted for the Working Drawing Award. 

The selected artists include an ex-teacher of mine! They are:

Max L Adams / Elisa Alaluusua / Lucy Algar / Thomas Allen / Tim Allen / Allou / Jeanette Barnes / Geoff Bartholomew / Sophie Bartlett / Akash Bhatt / Chris Blackburn /Jane Bottery / Eric Butcher / Ruth Chambers / Sarah Chapman / Sara Choudhrey / Hyeyeon Chung / Sara Clark / Gary Clough / David Conway / Aleksandra Czuja / Gerry Davies / Gary Dennis / Emma Douglas / Sarah Duyshart / Jamie Eade / Roy Eastland / Sian Ellis Tillott / Mark John Evans / Kristian Evju / Jonathan Farr / Nicolas Feldmeyer / Celu Ferreira / Charlie Ford / Todd Fuller / Stefan Gant / Ann Gillies / Adam Gray / Christopher Green / Catherine Greenwood / Richard Gregory / Susie Hamilton / Simon Head / Jessica Heywood / Roland Hicks / Fiona Hingston / Ciaran Hughes / Melinda Hunt / Julia Hutton /Owen Johnson / Janette Kerr / Jen Wei Kuo / Tomasz Lacy / Gary Lawrence / Bridget Lesly / Cheryl Lewis / Jo Lewis / Shihui Li / Edward Liddle / Yutong Liu / Juliette Losq / Peter Matthews / Janet Melrose / Jamie Mills / Jilly Morris / Justine Moss / David Mumby / Hannah Naify / Simon Page / Camilo Parra/ Esteban Peña Para / Ben Platts-Mills / Keira Rathbone / Jane Reid / Abbie Schug / Charlene
Scott / Brian Shields / Ilona Skladzien / Jake Spicer / David Symonds / Emma Tabor / Sally Dee Trewartha / Marika Tyler-Clark / Felicity Warbrick / Lynda Whitehouse / Phill Wilson-Perkin/ Hamish Young / Martha Zmpounou

View of The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 exhibition

I personally found the artwork in the exhibition to be of a high quality with a lot of impressive drawings - which varied a lot in terms of media and size and techniques employed. Many of the drawings are large. Many do not employ conventional display methods. The hang is also very good.

It's certainly well worth a visit.

In my opinion it's also better than the one held last year. (see Two Drawing Awards: Winners & Future Exhibitions).

Tomorrow I'll be uploading my photographs of the exhibition to an album on my Making A Mark Facebook Page - and will be highlighting there those artworks which caught my eye.

Awards and Prizes

This 3D work won The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize
(see below for more details)

All the artworks submitted were reviewed by the Judging Panel who then selected the shortlisted drawings and award-winners. The Panel was:

• 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 

The four award winning drawings, collectively received £17,000.  The prizes awarded were as follows...

First Prize (£8,000) 
Out of Round: An Abbreviated Outline of British Studio Pottery
2024, steel wire, 170 x 100 x 8cm
by Max L Adams

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). 

Second Prize (£5,000) 
(Left above): The 5th Arch, 2023
graffiti markers, drafting pencil on Bristol paper, 145 x 106cm 
by Owen Johnson. 

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. 

‘The 5th Arch” is a drawing about a space created from memory and through repetition. The drawing is part of a series I have been developing for sometime exploring architecture, pattern and colour

Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1976, Owen Johnson has exhibited widely across the globe and has become well known for his glasswork. 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.  He's currently a Professor at Sheridan's Faculty of Animation, Arts & Design (FAAD) which is Canada's largest art school.

Student Award (£2,000)
Window, 2024
ink on linen (diptych), 120 x 15cm
by Hyeyeon Chung. 

Student Award Winner, Hyeyeon Chung was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1992. She holds a BA in Korean traditional painting from Chung-Ang University and an MA in Fine Art: Drawing from the University of the Arts London.

‘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,’’

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. 

 

Working Drawing Award (£2,000)

Plan for Cato Mural, Year 8, Spa Fields, 2023,

watercolour on watercolour paper, 76 x 58cm

by Emma Douglas

‘‘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,’’ 

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 lives 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. 

Her instagram account records the prolific and various ways in which she records the life of her son Cato Heath. Each of the squares in her coloured square murals is colour coded to represent one activity - such as physiotherapy, hydrotherapy, speech therapy or Doctors appointments.  

Winner of the Working Drawing Award: Emma Douglas

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.

About the Drawing Prize

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.

NOTE The Drawing Prize has had a number of names in its career - usually influenced by whoever its current sponsor is. It was founded founded in 1994 by Anita Taylor and Paul Thomas as the Rexel Derwent Open Drawing Exhibition. From 2001-2017 it became known as the Jerwood Drawing Prize from 2001 to 2017 and was delivered in partnership with Jerwood Charitable Foundation. The present sponsor is the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust who became the principal benefactor in 2018. The constant throughout is Anita Taylor.