The Sequested Prize, a new self-portrait group award, launched on 27 April. The prize has been created by artist W. K. Lyhne and art curator and advisor Fru Tholstrup as an open call for established and new artists to create a platform of support during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The prize is open to current art students and people who graduated in the last twenty years from an arts-based degree. Submission are open until 30 June. The fifteen winners will have their work – which will also be for sale – exhibited at Tristan Hoare Gallery for a week. Ten percent of the sales will go to CW+, the official charity of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and ten percent towards the cost of the exhibition. The remainder goes to the artist.
In a statement the founders outlined their commitment to supporting the artistic community during the global health crisis, stating: ‘Born from the belief that art has always sustained humanity in its darkest hours, The Sequested Prize epitomises the founder’s ambitions to champion hope and creativity at a time when the art market is widely suffering across all areas during this pandemic, whilst also fostering the opportunity for self-reflection for the artist. Both ideologically and literally.’
The Sequested Prize judging panel:
Kate Bryan, Curator, writer and Head of Collections Soho House
Matt Carey-Williams, Senior Director and Worldwide Head of Sales for Victoria Miro Gallery
Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery
David Dawson, Painter and photographer
Fergus Duff, Director in Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art department
Maryam Eisler, London- based photographer and editor
Melanie Gerlis, Art market columnist, Financial Times and editor at-large, The Art Newspaper
Ruth Guilding, Art and design historian, writer and curator
Katy Hessel, Art historian and curator
Tristan Hoare, Gallerist
Dylan Jones, Award-winning editor, GQ magazine
Samson Kambalu, Artist and writer
Josh Lilley, Gallerist
Simon Martin, Director of Pallant House Gallery
Johnathan Messum, Founder of Messums, Cork St, Wiltshire, Harrogate
Jane Neal, Independent curator, art critic and advisor
Professor Simon Ofield-Kerr, Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of the Arts London
Justine Simons OBE, Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries
Carrie Scott, Art historian, curator and consultant
Carol Tulloch, Professor of Dress, Diaspora and Transnationalism at the University of the Arts London
Ewan Venters, CEO of Fortnum & Mason
Katy Wickremesinghe, Founder KTW London
Jonathan Yeo, Portrait Artist
