The Competition
The Chaiya Art Awards are CLOSED
WHAT WE DELIVERED:
Three national competitions encouraging and promoting artists across the whole of the UK, at all different stages of their careers.
Each competition culminated in a 10 day exhibition held at the gallery@oxo and expanded in 2023 to include The Bargehouse (16,500 sq metres).
One online exhibition during Covid featuring 60 invited artists on the impact of Covid, attracting over over 3,200 visits, with 7 of the artists being featured in subsequent press/magazine articles.
Welcomed nearly 12,000 visitors to our exhibitions.
Displayed 320 artworks.
Over 5,000 people participated in our public votes.
We received over 320,000 hits on our website.
Networked with nearly 8,000 artists across the UK.
Awarded £45,000 in prize money.
Over 600 theme-based Chaiya hardback books sold.
Donated £4,450 to Trafficking charity.
Award Criteria
Artists were judged on:
Theme Interpretation
Originality and Technique
Emotional impact
Entries were accepted on all visual artistic mediums that gallery@oxo and The Bargehouse can display including but not limited to painting, drawing, graphic design, sculpture, mixed media, photography, video, textiles, ceramics, glass, wood and installations.
What are the
Prizes
- Top prize: The Chaiya Art Award £10,000
- Public Choice Award: £1,000
- Judges Awards: Eight prizes of £500 each
A selection from the longlisted finalists were invited to exhibit their submitted work as part of each exhibition.
Venues
gallery@oxo AND The Bargehouse
Oxo Tower Wharf, Barge House St, London SE1 9PH
Judging Panels
We had the pleasure of working with some amazing judges and curators during our awards:
Marcus Lyon
Marcus Lyon (b. 1965) is a British artist, born & raised in rural Britain and is best known for his extensive, research-based work creating Human Atlases that explore groups of extraordinary people through photographic portraits, oral histories, and DNA mapping.
Lyon studied Political Science at university & leadership at Harvard Business School. Commissioned & exhibited globally, his works are held in both private & international collections including the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Netherlands Foto Museum Rotterdam, Art Institute of Chicago, the British Arts Council Collection, Detroit Institute of Arts, & the Smithsonian in Washington DC. The 21st century saw his work move beyond traditional forms as he began to incorporate sound & science into his practice. He has created extensive bodies of work on identity, diversity & globalisation.
Outside the art world, Lyon is a determined social entrepreneur & an active public speaker. Lyon is a TED speaker and has served on the boards of the global leadership social enterprise Leaders’ Quest, the art institution Somerset House and is an ambassador for Black Leaders Detroit.
Alastair Adams
Alastair Adams has been painting portraits since the mid 1990’s over which time he has established a strong reputation as a commissioned portrait artist. His dynamic but natural and unassuming portraits earning him many high profile commissions and acclaim through national and international exhibitions.
His portrait of Bruce Robinson, Director, Screenwriter, Novelist and Actor was selected for exhibition in the BP Portrait Award 2018 at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Alastair was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in London, to paint Tony Blair for their permanent collection.
After becoming a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters (RP) in 2002, in 2008 he was made President, the youngest in the Society’s 120 year history. In his capacity as President, he continued to build upon the Society’s history and strong reputation as a source for high quality, original and inventive world leading portraiture.
Ghislane Howard
Ghislaine is best known for her ability to create compelling images that relate to shared human experience, from the moment of birth to the moment of death. She has produced large scale public commissions such as The Stations of the Cross / The Captive Figure that has toured cathedrals since its creation in 2000. Her small daily paintings, relating to news media imagery have been widely exhibited at venues including Imperial War Museum North and Manchester Art Gallery. In 2013, her drawing, Pregnant Self Portrait was the centre piece of the British Museum exhibition, Ice Age Art: The Arrival of the Modern Mind. She is currently working on a sequence of large paintings dedicated to the Seven Acts of Mercy.
Favour Jonathan
Favour Jonathan is a London based multidisciplinary artist born in Benin City Nigeria. In 2001 Favour won 1st prize in Sky Arts TV show, ‘Landmark’ where artists across the country competed to create the UK’s next major landmark. Her winning sculpture was installed on the former IKEA building in Coventry.
Jonathan gained BA Honours in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins (CSM) in London and it was during her studies that she developed an interest in the gaze from a western perspective and definition of Fine art from an African creative lens. Her works are culturally stimulated creations, which operate as representations of her understanding of the world and consider how they can motivate young people in recognising their strength through art processes. A method and passion which she developed whilst studying and working at CSM.
Jonathan has exhibited as part of the RA summer show 2018, as well as Lagos Biennial, 198 Gallery, BBZ BLACK BOOK’’ Copeland Gallery .
Kaffe Fassett
Kaffe was born in San Francisco and started as a fine artist, winning a scholarship to study at The Boston Museum of Fine Arts School when he was nineteen. He left after three months to paint in London, and after settling in England, his passion for colour led him to knitting and designing knitwear for Missoni and Bill Gibb amongst others, and his hand-knitted garments are now in museum collections all over the world.
In 1969, Kaffe was asked to design a garment for a large colour page feature in British Vogue, photographed by David Bailey. Kaffe’s unique garments have been commissioned and collected by Barbra Streisand, Lauren Bacall, John Schlesinger, Ali McGraw, Shirley Maclaine, Alan Bergman and H.R.H. Princess Michael of Kent, to name but a few. Kaffe has also been interviewed countless times on national television and radio programmes such as ‘Richard and Judy’ for ‘This Morning’; ‘Chelsea Flower Show Live’ and for Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’ and ‘Desert Island Discs’ with Sue Lawley.
In 1988 Kaffe became the first living textile artist to have a one-man show at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The exhibition attracted such crowds that the Museum doubled attendance figures during the run and the exhibition toured to nine countries: Finland, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, Canada, USA and Iceland. Kaffe Fassett has dedicated the last 50 years of his life to the world of Knitting, Needlepoint and Patchwork, promoting these crafts through his own work and encouraging others to find their own creativity. He has produced close to 50 publications.
Dr Christo Kefalas
Christo Kefalas is a cultural anthropologist and art history researcher. Since 2018, Christo has worked for the National Trust, currently as the Senior Curator of Global and Inclusive Histories. She leads on institutional advice for the care and display of collections originating outside of Europe, while also promoting the greater global connectivity of all Trust collections. Christo was an editor and author of the ‘Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery’.
Her D.Phil. from the University of Oxford focused on 19th century Māori artefacts and a photography collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Christo brings an anthropological perspective on history and diverse cultural experiences to her public curation practice, acknowledging the importance of identity and power in society. She has worked as a curator for collections at the British Museum, Great North Museum Newcastle, and the Horniman Museum where she managed the curatorial delivery of the permanent World Cultures Gallery in South London.
Despite being born in warm and sunny Athens, Greece and raised in Los Angeles, California, Christo is drawn to cultural hotspots and has made London her home for 15 years. She spends as much time seeing art in museums and galleries outside of work as she does inside of work. She also enjoys being outdoors in nature, equally spending time hiking in mountains or cycling around the city.
Deborah Tompsett
Deborah Tompsett, B.A Fine Art/Sculpture, is a Sussex-based artist Winner of the 2018 Chaiya Art Award, Her work encompasses ceramics, sculpture and painting. She is strongly committed to working within her community, collaborating with schools, care homes and inter-generational groups to create works together that reflect the uniqueness of each setting and its participants.
Her personal artwork continues this engagement with the world and the people around her – their contribution often extending and enriching the narrative of each piece. She embraces the ‘accidental’ and experimental in the process of making art and uses the visual and tactile language of texture, colour, and light, to explore the idea of ‘the poetry of living space’ (Mary Abbott).
Mark Dean
Mark was a Fine Art lecturer at Goldsmiths College before moving to the University of the Arts London, based at Central Saint Martins among others as an Anglican Chaplain and Interfaith Advisor. Dean has work held in museum collections internationally. He is known for his looped video and sound works, combining fragments of existing film and music to produce new works, often dealing with heightened states of consciousness.
Clive Davis
Clive has been a freelance journalist for more than twenty-five years, mainly writing on the arts for The Times and Sunday Times. Other work has appeared in The Independent, Daily Express, New Statesman and Weekly Standard. I’ve also written and presented Radio 4 documentaries on the novelist Richard Wright and the journalist and historian William L. Shirer, author of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”. I started my career at West Indian World newspaper in London before joining the BBC as a News Trainee.
Laura Gascoigne
Laura Gascoigne is an art critic and regular reviewer for The Tablet, Spectator, Apollo and RA Magazine. She has been a selector for the Discerning Eye Exhibition, the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize and the Columbia Threadneedle Prize and is a member of the Exhibition Committee of the Federation of British Artists and the Discerning Eye Educational Board. A former editor of Artists & Illustrators magazine, she is as interested in the practice as in the theory of art. When not writing about art, she paints.
Katrina Moss, Founder
Founder of the Chaiya Art Awards. Katrina has extensive experience in marketing and the Arts and has always been passionate about creativity. Katrina adheres to the beliefs that artistic expression is a multi-faceted gift that allows us to express the unutterable, glimpse mystery and explore the complexities of the human condition. In the process we can discover ourselves and that the arts contain an intrinsic power to deeply move, challenge and engage our souls.
Ann Clifford – Co founder, Author
Ann has a wide range of professional experience encompassing organisational leadership, playwriting, screenwriting, radio magazine programme producing and presenting, special needs teaching, and contributes articles to books and magazines. She is the author of ‘Time to Live: The Beginner’s Guide to Saying Goodbye’ and as a speaker has spoken many times on the subject. She has written both the Chaiya Art Awards books – ‘one of the highlights of my writing life’. Ann is passionate about work that invites us to explore spirituality allowing its fresh provocation to resonate within us and emanate through out lives.
Alastair Gordon – Curator, 2023
Alastair’s works feature in various public, corporate and private collections including the Simmons and Simmons Collection and Beth de Woody Collection. Recent solo exhibitions at the Ahmanson Gallery, Los Angeles and First Things Gallery, New York. He was awarded the inaugural Shoosmiths painting prize in 2014 and has been shortlisted for various other awards including the Dentons Art Prize and Jacksons Painting Prize.
Founder and Director Husk Gallery, London, until 2015 Alastair worked on various curatorial projects in Limehouse, London. Husk is a partnership between Departure and Morphe Arts, run by artists for artists with a particular lean towards new graduates’ work.
Alastair is course leader for Professional Practice at the Leith School of Art, Edinburgh where he also coordinates their graduate residency programme. He draws every day and works out of his South London studio where he is currently working on new paintings.
Lesley Sutton – Curator, 2021
Lesley Sutton was a curator and fibre based artist based in Manchester. She was founding director of PassionArt, a charity that explores issues around art and faith through exhibitions, projects, teaching, resourcing and creative gatherings.
Lesley was passionate about encouraging others to tap into their own creativity and to encourage the aesthetic to form part of our everyday living. As a creative artist, curator and community arts worker she enjoyed working collaboratively with a wide variety of groups, encouraging the use of artistic activities to support physical, emotional and spiritual development; improving quality of life through the creative sharing and expression of social and personal histories of gender, disability, health and the environment.
Sophie Hacker - Curator, 2018
Curating the Chaiya Art Awards exhibition Sophie studied painting at the Slade School, UCL. Her work is in public and private collections and used regularly in publications. She is a trustee of A+CE, the UK’s leading organisation in the field of visual art and religion. She is Art Consultant at Winchester Cathedral with particular responsibility of curating three exhibitions each year, ranging from site-specific group shows, painting, sculpture, installation and video work. Her own practice focuses on Church art, including stained glass, textiles, and liturgical furniture. She is Visiting Scholar at Sarum College in Salisbury.