Open Exhibition Prize Winners

The creativity of East Midlands artists was celebrated at the recent launch of Open: The People's Exhibition, open now at Leicester Museum & Art Gallery.

This year's exhibition features 352 works by local people from complete beginners to seasoned professionals, from both adults and young artists. The artists were invited to the launch evening with friends and family to view their creations on display in the exhibition for the first time, and prizes were awarded for the very best selected by a panel of independent judges and sponsors:

Winner of the Attenborough Prize 2024:

Susan Isaac for Balance and Counterbalance, oil on canvas with mixed media elements

Congratulations to landscape artist Susan Isaac, whose studio is based in Newark, for winning The Attenborough Prize for the second time (also won in 2022).

"I was astonished and absolutely delighted to be presented with the Attenborough Prize.. I am so grateful to the selectors and judges and everyone involved in putting on this wonderful annual exhibition - one that I've been pleased to be involved with since first applying in 2015.

My winning piece is "Balance and Counterbalance" (mixed media on canvas). The work emerged from a recent visit to Blaenavon Ironworks, now a Cadw-maintained World Heritage Site. The site holds a special meaning for me, in the first instance as it is close to my late father's South Wales coal-mining family home in nearby Llanbradach and secondly as, in a former life working in the heritage industry, I carried out a listing buildings survey of Blaenavon in 1994 - and the Balance Tower was formally listed grade 1 in 1995.

These extraordinary remnants of another era are inextricably linked to their dramatic surroundings in the South Wales Valleys. The painting depicts a tower for a water balanced lift, used to convey raw materials and pig iron between the different levels of the site. I am always mindful, when visiting such sites, of a strong sense of the wounds inflicted on the land as well as on the iron workers and the miners who inhabited the communities here, both above and below ground, and of the power of the natural world to restore some kind of equilibrium."

For more about Susan Isaac visit her website: www.susan-isaac.co.uk

The Attenborough Awards for Young People were awarded to:

• Hattie Weller (aged 18) for The Brutality of Life, a collection of fired clay pieces
  
  
• Mahi Ghait (aged 15) for Meadow, Acrylic painted paper on canvas
  
  
• Lewis Holmes (aged 9), for Look Closer acrylic on canvas, which comes with its own magnifying glass
  
  

Winner of the Leicester Museums & Galleries Development Trust Adult Category:

Christine Pearson, a jewellery designer based in Leicester who makes enamel jewellery, for Shell Collection, 10 brooches, kiln fired enamel on copper, displayed in a wooden box, which she describes as 'fantasmagorical (sic) creatures from the little known oceans surrounding the ancient seaport of Leicester’.

Christine wrote on her Facebook page:

"So thrilled to have won the Leicester Museums and Galleries Trust Prize at the Leicester Open exhibition!
My box of enamelled shells were inspired from years of looking at Victorian collections in museums and old houses. Childhood memories of my Grandads shell collection, which he kept in a home-made cardboard box."

 

Winners of the Leicester Museums & Galleries Development Trust Children’s and Young People’s Categories:

• Tom Hudson (aged 18) for Waiting (oil on board)
  Tom also won the Arch Creative prize for this piece

• Oriel Birks (aged 11) for A Little Owl Looks (pencil drawing)
  Oriel also won the Phoenix prize for this piece

• Vincent Parker (aged 9) for Arc de Triomphe (ball-point pen on paper)
  
  

Other Prize Winners in the Adult Category:

Sponsors:

• Art House - Carol Pairaudeau for Type/Write
  
  
• CVAN East Midlands - Sarah Mason for A Labradoodle’s Lazy Afternoon
  
  
• LCB Depot (three prizes):
  Moya Acton for Nocturn
  Katie Richards for Bernadette
  Emma Peers for What’s Your Thread Length?
  
  
• Leicester Gallery (De Montfort University) - Emma Peers for What’s Your Thread Length?
  
  
• Leicester Print Workshop - Katerina Luchkova for Reflections of the City
  
  
• Phoenix - Klara Simandi for Textile Flowers

 

Other Prize Winners in the Children’s and Young People’s Categories:

Sponsors:

• Art House - Toby Cross for Phonebox
  
  
• Curve - Elina Roman for Plastic Island
  
  
• De Montfort Hall - Nada Rhimin for Dance Dance Dance
  
  
• Leicester Lo-Fi Photography - Anfisa Denysenko for Architectural Composition
  
  
• Leicester Print Workshop - Henry Dampney for Black and White
  
  
• Phoenix - Ayah Riyaazi for Self Portrait
  
  
• Soft Touch Arts - Lina Rehab for Afternoon Repose

Congratulations to all of the prize winners, and thank you to all the entrants for making a truly exciting and original show.

Come along and view the exhibition, open until 31st January 2025.