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Announcing the 2024 UCL East Provost Art Prize Winners
15 November 2024
Meet the emerging young artists who have been awarded this year’s UCL East Provost Art Prize! The winners will present existing pieces and create new work that aims to inspire new ideas, conversations and events at UCL East.
Image: Performance Site, Roman Sheppard Dawson, 2024
Each year, the Provost Art Prize recognises the achievements of four graduates from the UCL’s Slade School of Fine Art. The winners receive an award, and their selected artwork is featured on the UCL East campus.
Running since 2020, the prize reflects UCL East’s commitment to animate its buildings at its newest campus on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park through meaningful public art, whilst celebrating the high-quality work of UCL students, and supporting them to develop their artistic careers.
The winning artists were selected from the Slade Graduate Show 2024 by a panel, including UCL President & Provost Dr Michael Spence, Pro-Provost of UCL East Prof Paola Lettieri, Slade Director Mary Evans, and UCL Head of Public Art Sam Wilkinson. They were selected based on the quality and breadth of their work, how their work responded to the current UCL East art collection, and how it might generate new public events and dialogues. This year also saw a work specially selected by the Slade’s outgoing Director Kieren Reed, to mark the end of his tenure.
We will be installing two visual artworks from Isabella Sartori and Ross Head, supporting a new film work by Roman Sheppard Dawson and commissioning new photographic work by Raquel Yago Boj.
Meet the artists
Ross Head
Ross Head’s piece ‘Will The Memory Survive’ will be displayed as part of the permanent collection at UCL East Marshgate.
His paintings are drawn from memory and from imagery found in queer archival magazines and ephemera. Ross borrowed the title ‘Will The Memory Survive’ from Whitney Houston’s 'How Will I know’, a song about a deep yearning for connection. This notion is reflective of the feelings he often tries to embody and convey through painting.
Ross says:
“I am honoured that one of the artworks from my MA degree show has been selected for inclusion in UCL’s public art collection, through the nomination by the outgoing director, Kieren Reed. My time at Slade was an incredibly enriching and transformative experience and I am grateful for this acknowledgment.
“This recognition marks a significant milestone in my artistic career and I am pleased that my work will reach a wider audience.”
Isabella Sartori
During her time at the Slade, Isabella began to consider process and material as being the dominant subject for a painting. ‘Bath and Poplars’ is an example of how she navigates figurative references, but still keeps a sense of narrative at arm's length, in the hope of drawing the viewer’s attention away from the initial subject of the painting and instead to the layers of painted colour in the process.
Isabella says:
“Although it is sad to move on from the Slade, being awarded the Provost Prize is an amazing way to close this chapter and a big vote of confidence.
“I hope that those who see this piece in its new public home take from it a new appreciation for mess and chaos, and that it encourages people to connect with my ideas in new ways. In the future I see my work confronting figuration in a less playful, more inquisitive way.”
Roman Sheppard Dawson
Roman Sheppard Dawson’s film ‘Performance Site’ will be installed in the Marshgate building, a two-channel video projection depicting a dance rehearsal studio with improvised choreography and an improvised live musical score. We will be programming a range of events and creative dialogues in response to the film.
Roman’s work explores the conditions of the rehearsal space, where performance is tested and risked behind closed doors. The camera becomes an active participant in the work, its gaze shifting depending on who is operating at any given time. In this respect, the work is dance with the camera as opposed to dance for the camera.
Roman says:
“Receiving this prize allows me to continue to make work, which is an immense privilege. It takes many people to make moving image and performance work happen, so I am excited to be able to celebrate their involvement with its continued presentation.
“The work has always been experiential and I look forward to seeing how that could translate into the UCL East spaces, and the potential for live performance versions to be generated alongside or in direct response to the film.”
Raquel Yago Boj
Raquel Yago Boj has been commissioned to develop a new photographic series for Marshgate, which aims to explore the contrasts and connections between UCL’s Bloomsbury and East campuses and create a dialogue between these two spaces.
Raquel‘s work plays with elements of representation, incorporating mathematical and analytical elements to explore how we relate to photography, physicality and space.
Raquel says:
“My work always starts with choosing an interesting, often structural, space that I feel a strong connection to, and developing interventions that converse or react with that space.
“The knowledge contained in the main library at Bloomsbury and the thousands of layers of paint attached to the walls of the Slade connect me with the historic legacy of UCL and the artists that came before me. The Marshgate building, in contrast, is a structural reflection of the holistic, modern way of understanding education.
“It is a very interesting proposition for me as an artist to attempt to create a visual conversation between those two different worlds.
Professor Paola Lettieri, Pro-Provost of UCL East, said:
This is the fourth year of the UCL East Provost Art Prize and each year I am thrilled to see such high-quality and beautiful work being produced by the students. Their work joins an exceptional public art collection that invites staff, students and the public to come to our East campus, be inspired and share ideas.
We sit within a vibrant, creative and evolving community, at the heart of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and the UK’s newest cultural quarter. The Provost Prize aims to reflect this by showcasing diverse and exciting artistic practice, and supports students from the very start of their career journeys.”