Chester Students Prize

Born March 1956 in Methil, Fife, Scotland, David Mach joined Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art from 1974 to 1979. He experimented with ideas and techniques claiming them as his own, continuing to develop them today. A graduate of the Royal College of Art in 1982 Mach became a Royal Academician in 1998 and has been appointed professor of Inspiration and Discovery at Dundee University.

One of the most prolific artists of his generation, Mach has extensively exhibited his work worldwide developing his artistic style based on flowing assemblages of mass–produced objects from magazines & newspapers, car tyres, matches to coat hangers, soft toys, pins, nails, etc.

Selected major public installations include Temple at Tyre in Edinburgh, Here to Stay made with 145 tonnes of the Daily Record and Polaris, a submarine made out of tyres outside the Hayward Gallery on London’s South Bank.

Public commissions sculptures include the sumo wrestlers It Takes Two in Paris and Marseilles, Out of Order in Kingston upon Thames made out of telephone boxes, Train in Darlington, the Big Heids of Scotland’s M8, the UK’s Portrait of a Nation commissioned for the Millennium Dome, Precious Light at the CAC in Edinburgh, Incoming in London and No Place Like Home in St Austell.

Mach continues on a furious schedule constantly developing new ideas, new works and new materials. This latest work, The Oligarch’s Nightmare will set him off on a whole new branch of his art, combined with his music and writing we can expect to see exciting new works.

Photo Credit: Paul Murphy

Howard Bilton is Chairman and founder of The Sovereign Group. Howard holds a joint honours BA degree in classics and law from the University of Keele and is qualified as a Barrister and called to the Bars of England/Wales and Gibraltar.  

He is a visiting non-resident professor at Texas A and M University where he assists with their LLM and Masters degrees in International Tax and Offshore Centres.  

In 2003 he formed The Sovereign Art Foundation (SAF) which runs a range of art prizes designed to increase the exposure of artists in the region, while raising money to help disadvantaged children.  

SAF has raised over US$11 million which has been used to help thousands of disadvantaged children using expressive arts as a means of education and rehabilitation.  

Howard has a personal art collection comprising around 420 pieces made by a wide range of artists from students to internationally famous artists.   

He has acted as a judge on various Sovereign sponsored art prizes in Hong Kong, Bahrain, Gibraltar, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, London, Malta, Mauritius, Portugal and Singapore.  He has also acted as a nominator for the Sovereign professional prizes in Africa and Portugal. 

Howard is the Founder and Chairman of Howard’s Folly Wines, Portugal. All wines use art on the labels and often feature work by finalists of the various Sovereign art prizes or children taught by SAF. A proportion of the revenue from wine sales goes to support SAF. 

Jim Wheat is an authentic engaging, passionate self taught Artist, strategic brand development specialist and contemporary creative who harnesses internal and external influences and emotive responses to help create and drive vibrant, authentic and engaging Artworks, messages, brands, causes and communities both in the physical realmand the metaverse dispensing energy along the way.

Thriving on connecting the dots and forming WIN : WIN partnerships, turning ‘ME’ into ‘WE’ with an often unfiltered contagious childlike energy during these disruptive times.

Kevin Francis Gray, (Armagh, 1972) is an Irish sculptor. He studied Painting at the National College Of Art and Design in Dublin (1995), the School of Art Institute in Chicago (1996), and Goldsmiths University in London (1999). He now splits his life and work between London, UK and Pietrasanta, Italy. Known for working predominantly with marble, Gray inherits the material’s historic and cultural legacies and re-contextualises the classical modus operandi into contemporary productions, celebrating the tradition of sculpture whilst favouring a forward-looking approach. Addressing the complex relationship between abstract and figuration in his subjects, Gray transcends marble’s innate features of hardness and stillness, defeating its nature and the physicality of the process, succeeding at breathing life into the stone to unearth shapes and emotions buried within the block.

Gray is internationally represented by Pace (New York, London, Hong Kong, Seoul, Geneva, East Hampton, Palm Beach, Los Angeles), Andersen’s (Copenhagen), Eduardo Secci (Florence, Milan, Pietrasanta), and Alon Segev (Tel Aviv). His work has been included in exhibitions at Museo Bardini, Florence, Italy (2020); Sculpture in the City, London, UK (2019); Messums Wiltshire, Tisbury, UK (2018); Villa Santo Sospir, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, France (2017); Armagh Market Place Arts Centre, Armagh, Northern Ireland (2017); Belvedere Museum, Vienna, Austria (2014); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel (2011); Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2011); MAC VAL Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de- Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine, France (2010); Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejoen, South Korea (2009); Riso - Museo regionale d’Arte Contemporanea di Palermo, Palermo, Italy (2009); MAMC Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Étienne métropole, Saint-Étienne, France (2009, 2008); Sudeley Castle, Winchcombe, UK (2008); ARTIUM Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (2008); RA Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2002); Art Space NY, New York NY, USA (2000).