London Students Prize 2024

A painting exploring the evidence of time’s progression – degredation and re-growth – through the lens of crumbling urban structures. As they weaken over-time, this gives rise to the re-generation and reclamation of organic life; previously displaced by human construction: commenting on the intertwined yet incompatible relationship between the organic world and our own urban environments and architectural constructions.

This self portrait was inspired by the mythos behind Tarantism, where the afflicted would dance the Tarantella to cure the parasite that puppeteers them. The overlayed imagery conveys a fragmented psyche, the expression feels somewhat ambiguous.

Capitalism enables the fanatic pursuit of profit and power that exploits and dehumanizes people. Society is cannibalistic because people eat people. The viewer can sit on the chair and experience the cannibalistic nature of humanity and their existence. The chair allows this story to come full circle, with the viewer becoming implicit of exploitation and cannibalism, intentional or not.

A powerful embodiment of strength and confidence, reflecting the commanding presence and dedication of a maternal figure, serving as an aspirational ideal to uphold in life.

This piece underscores the theme of feminine vulnerability, exploring the question of what it means to be ‘naked’ within the eyes of society as a young woman.

The young lady stands peacefully between two beautiful Sakura trees while looking down at the floor, covered with fallen petals, painting the ground a mesmerising pink colour. I sought to begin this painting after being inspired by a photo of my Japanese cousin before her wedding. I wanted to capture her feeling of contentment through the expression on her face with a gentle smile. In the “A Bride to Be”, I emphasised the level of details in the intricately hand-sewn flowers and cranes on the traditional kimono. The flowers around her all blossom and flourish, symbolising a birth of love.

This piece explores the narrative of the Greek story of Andromeda and is a direct comment on how women were viewed and represented in ancient history. Each tile holds an illustration of symbolic reference to her journey. The snake, denoted in the fleshy imagery surrounding the blue tiles, signifies the origin of Eve being impressionable and manipulative. The dropped tile, depicting the apple, is the breaking down of this narrative.

A rainy day in London outside the tower of London. Reflections that illustrate the night sky, and a dark pallet that compliments the highlights the beautiful blues and noise. Acrylic on Canvas with a variety of textures using a variety of paintbrushes and strokes that really show a contemporary side of this piece. Luring the viewers eyes into the dead centre of the street as it slowly shrinks into the depths of the wet London streets. With moods of the Winter season. This painting has little colour but a lovely complexion of colours which contrast each other in the background.

“Corrupt perception” A painting inspired by the concept of disassociation, loss of sense of reality and out of body experience

This work explores the inherent paradox of fantasy and reality and how the line between the two can become blurred, taking inspiration mainly from Gilbert and George’s ‘Dirty Words’ series.

This is a painting inspired by my own experience. I tend to find myself stressed and even out of breath in the busy, demanding school life, but during times of dining, I tend to relax and relief, escaping from the stressful thoughts of work and tasks. All the foods in the painting is what I really love to eat at home, including the fluffy white rice, grilled fish, fruits and vegetables, and some lovely pastry desserts. The warm colour tone represents the comfort I receive when dining, as well as the casual clothing reflecting on the significance of taking a break from the ongoing cycle of heavy workload.

This work is to illustrate the contrast in hierarchy positions that women are placed especially in workplaces and the inequality women face and has faced over the years. I wanted to create this to allow women to feel and experience the equality and privilege that men face. I chose the idea of stairs to mainly represent hierarchy but also show how women has climbed up step by step over the years for example being able to work and vote.

As a person of two backgrounds, half Thai and half English and having spent my early life in Thailand before relocating to England, I have always been conflicted with my identity – shown through the two faces on the sculpture facing different directions, expressing inner conflict. The sculpture’s blue glazing, barnacles, and sand illustrate how I’ve grown attached to the ocean as a result of growing up by the sea; it also shows how memories of my childhood flood my mind and how I will always be a part of my identity and my Thai heritage.

A photo-realistic tonal self-portrait of the artist, made with graphite pencil on paper. This work was intended to represent issues with mental health, with drops of water alluding to ‘drowning’ emotionally, in anxiety or fear.

This sculpture series is inspired by the geolocation system What Three Words, which pinpoints any location on Earth within a 3-meter resolution using unique word combinations like ‘Oven.Globe.Structure’ for London. Each sculpture is a physical interpretation of these abstract tags, visualising the intersection of language and place. The forms are created through a dynamic process – human interpretation followed by 3D printing – blurring the boundary between human creativity and technological execution. These sculptures explore the dialogue between technology and humanity, merging digital precision with organic artistic vision.

A portrait looking a statues in the UK.

This acrylic portrait depicts a young girl. Her blank expression, enveloped by violent, thick textured brush strokes, describes the raw emotion and suffering of the powerless on whom power is used to inflict pain. The girl emerges from a shadowy background, her eye emphasized by the contrast of the harsh lighting. The face is distorted by a bloodied hand, suggesting it’s abusive nature. The harmonious colour pallette creates intensity and illustrates the danger the helpless girl is in. I created this piece to acknowledge those who’s childhoods were ripped away from them.

What makes a face beautiful? Is it the eyes, the lips, the nose or simply a combination of these features? When you choose what parts of your face to cover and what parts to reveal to the world; You decide your beauty. However, what happens when someone else wants to see the real you? They rip and tear apart these coverings – these parts of you and they thrust them into the world. They break apart your unnatural, yet beautiful symmetry. What happens when all that’s left is… You? The real, natural you, hanging by a thread of your puppet master’s making, with your grotesqueness finally visible for all to see

A self-portrait painting depicting a young figure with a pink origami butterfly covering their eyes. The geometric structure simultaneously obscures the sitter’s vision while distorting the viewer’s perception of the subject’s skin and features, blending reality and abstraction.

This painting is a patchwork of different photos and styles that I curated over my fourth year (year 10) fine art course. My goal was to make the piece register as one whole image, rather than a collage, and integrate all these contradictory aspects into a single scene. Much like how vastly different people can come together in society, and function as a whole.

However, humans usually have an aversion to what they deem different from themselves, hence why we tend to be friends with kindred spirits, and why cliques form. However, this also breeds ostracisation and closedmindedness, as we shy away from exploring new aspects of identity that we cannot learn on our own.

Because of this, I wanted to depict this piece through the eyes of someone who feels uncomfortable around those they consider unfamiliar or atypical. Hence, I made the image very dark, used colours that clashed, and mixed my paint with black, to make the whole thing quite ugly. Despite the unpleasant imagery, nothing bad actually happens in the painting. These vastly different people seem to be getting along quite well, even helping each other and having fun: the perceived ugliness is all in the viewer’s head.

Thus, this painting is encouragement for the viewer to allow themselves to be more eccentric, and not fear eccentricity in others, so that this mismatched world won’t seem so ugly.