Sweet 16: Young Masters Retrospective: Frieze Week

Yinka Shonibare CBE

b. 1962, London

Yinka Shonibare was born in 1962 in London and moved to Lagos, Nigeria at the age of three. He now lives and works in London. His work explores issues of race and class through the media of painting, sculpture, photography and film. Having described himself as a ‘post-colonial’ hybrid, Shonibare questions the meaning of cultural and national definitions. His trademark material is the brightly coloured ‘African’ batik fabric he buys at Brixton market. The fabric was inspired by Indonesian design, mass-produced by the Dutch and eventually sold to the colonies in West Africa. In the 1960s the material became a new sign of African identity and independence.

Yinka Shonibare is an internationally well renowned artist and in just 2023 alone exhibited at Lagos Peckham Repeat at South London Gallery, To Be Free at Salisbury Cathedral, Trace at Haus der Kunst in Munich, The Art of Fabric at Kunsthalle Vogelmann in Germany, Sharjah Biennial 15 at Sharjah in UAE, Between Before and After at the Cristea Roberts Gallery in London, The Fest at MAK in Vienna, Austria and Constellations at Kura Kura in Bali, Indonesia.

Courtesy of Yinka Shonibare CBE and Cristea Roberts Gallery, London.

Daisy McMullan

b. 1985, UK

Daisy McMullan is an artist who creates richly layered paintings that document the natural world.

Inspired by magical realism and the ever-changing soul of the landscape, her work employs expressive colour and mark-making to craft otherworldly interpretations of everyday scenes. Her shimmering paintings capture the glimmers of hope and joy found in nature, for those willing to look closely enough.

Daisy’s paintings frequently feature the verges, lines, and paths that map out ways of navigating the world both physically and emotionally. These are places she walks regularly - overlooked, common spaces that belong to everyone and no one. They are small wildernesses, uncultivated and irregular, which Daisy transforms into imaginative compositions, with multiple layers of colour and glazes creating a sense of layered stories and narratives within these marginal spaces.

The compositions play with the sacred geometries of nature, such as spirals, circles and webs. These patterns are inspired by the research of artist and permaculture expert Liz Postlethwaite, and the writings on deep ecology and systems thinking by scholar Joanna Macy. Many of the paintings are marked by contrasting flatness and depth, manipulating traditional methods of conjuring perspective and depth on the painting's surface.

Each painting is a meditation on an interaction with the natural world—a rewilding of the mind, self, and soul. The Romantic ideals of returning to nature, individual spirituality, and treading ancient paths to commune with the metaphysical deeply influence her creative process.

Daisy's work also references Dutch Golden Age still life and forest floor paintings, where life, death, and spirit are carefully balanced and observed in sharply contrasting tones. Her expressive mark-making draws inspiration from Abstract Expressionism, particularly the works of Joan Mitchell and Lee Krasner. There is also a distinctive English folkloric quality to Daisy's paintings that resonates with the work of Albrecht Durer and Lucian Freud’s approach to painting plants.

These works serve as records of nature, preserving seemingly unimportant details for a future time. Yet they are also deeply concerned with the technology and theory of painting, involving constant and rigorous experiments with colour, opacity, viscosity, and temperature. Daisy carefully selects her palette to render plant life in a unique way that imparts feeling, texture, and movement to her paintings.

Natural forms in Daisy’s work are built using a combination of free, expressive strokes, textural stippling, and folk art-inspired lines that shape leaves and petals. The use of tonal layers, akin to the construction of a screen print, helps build movement and tension between translucent and opaque forms. A key technique of underpainting, inspired by the old masters, adds luminous depth. These ideas and techniques are gradually layered, with colour and light added incrementally until a beautiful image emerges from the dark.

Daisy trained as a fine artist at Wimbledon School of Art and Camberwell College of Arts, earning a BA (Hons) in Painting in 2007. She later pursued a Master’s in Curating at Chelsea College of Art and Design and was awarded a two-year Research Fellowship in 2012 at Chelsea Space, a public gallery at the College. Daisy currently works as an artist, educator, and curator.

Notable solo exhibitions by Daisy include 'Observed Imagined Remembered' at Cass Art Kingston (2022) and 'Rewildings' at Dorking Museum (2022). She has also participated in group shows including: ‘For the Love of Art History’, Young Masters Art Prize at the Exhibitionist Hotel, London (2025), ‘Milestone: 20 Years in Art’ and 'Summer Exhibition 2024' at Cynthia Corbett Gallery (2024), 'HERO' at Great West Gallery (2024), 'Mirror of Life' and 'Abstract Worlds' at Croydon Art Space (2024 and 2023), 'Winter Group Show' at Folkestone Art Gallery (2023), and the 'Young Masters' Invitational Exhibition at The Exhibitionist Hotel (2023-24).

Daisy made her debut at the British Art Fair at the Saatchi Gallery with Cynthia Corbett Gallery in 2023 and returned with a new body of work in 2024. She was also selected for the Women in Art Fair Artist' Spotlight section in 2024, and was shortlisted for the SAA Artist of the Year People’s Choice Award in 2022.

Daisy works from her studio in Brixton, South London, creating paintings and exhibitions that reflect on nature and place. These works become emotional documents, depicting unseen feelings as much as they record the visible world.

Daisy McMullan is an Exhibiting Artist with Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Thomas Kelly

b. 1963, Trenton, New Jersey

Thomas Kelly is an award winning, New Jersey based painter. Widely collected, his work has a signature style, which has its roots in Expressionism. His colorful, narrative, acrylic paintings on canvas often create a dialogue with the viewer. His deceptively simplistic paintings are both critically acclaimed and very approachable by everyday viewers. More than 425 of Kelly’s original paintings have been collected. Kelly has exhibited in New Jersey, New York City, Philadelphia and London, England. His work is in private and public collections in the US, Europe and Asia.

“Thomas Kelly paints not the America we have, he paints America as we would like it to be. His paintings give us hope, like a modern Norman Rockwell.” - Walter Wickiser, 2023

Ghost of a Dream

Ghost of a Dream is the moniker of the ongoing collaboration between Adam Eckstrom and Lauren Was, who respectively have backgrounds in painting and sculpture. The pair make sculptures and installations about common fantasies and desires—fame, wealth, true love, and salvation—from detritus and images from pop culture. Their common raw materials include dismembered trophy parts, romance novels, clips from Hollywood films, playing cards from casinos, and used lottery tickets. “Our sculpture and installations embody the essence of opulence while being constructed of materials that typically end up in the trash,” the pair write. “We mine popular culture searching for discarded materials that people use trying to reach their goals.”

Recent Public Art Installations include REMEMBER WHEN TOMORROW CAME, a permanent installation at IS653 Brooklyn New York, 2024,THE DREAMER OF DREAMS, a Site specific full room permanent installation at La Napoule Art Foundation, La Napoule, France, 2024 and Aligned by the Sun (connections), a site specific full surround installation in the departure hall at Penn Station as part of Art at Amtrak, New York, NY 2023.
Ghost of a Dream also recently hosted their Solo Museum Exhibition I know a place where they perform miracles at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, Arlington, VA in 2024.

We are honoured to host our inaugural winners of the Young Master's Art Prize at our 16th anniversary exhibition.

LLUÍS BARBA

Barcelona, Spain

Lluís Barba constructs his huge photographs with minute attention to detail. During the last twenty years he has developed his distinctive iconography, each work including visual references as people, paintings and his own artworks are transferred to new compositions. Just as artists have for centuries teased their audience with allegory and symbolism, so Barba’s jigsaw of iconography presents a maze of allegorical pathways, the symbolism of the historical sources overlaid with that of the contemporary characters, reinforced by our own personal knowledge and experience and the gravitas afforded by column inches, art criticism and saleroom prices. In Barba’s work we can read the growth of celebrity currency, commentary on recent history and also his own personal reflections: like many historical artists, Barba’s work is also ultimately a giant autobiography. We see photographs of collectors or visitors gathered from trips to international art fairs, including images he has been asked to take by people viewing his own work; there are his motifs such as barcodes, imprinted on his characters; and the rainbows and flowers, his symbols of hope. Wry humour and ironic cross-references colour his visual commentary, as we are invited to navigate between images in the contemporary world, instantly recognisable art historical references and the ever-changing landscape of celebrity icons. When you stand in front of one of Barba’s enormous photographs you are literally in the space of the art as it spreads out before you, sometimes extending into the viewing space with flooring or sculptures spilling from the image.

Born in Spain and educated at the Escola Massana Centre d’Art, Barcelona, Barba has exhibited his work in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Canada. His work is held in major public collections and his private collections include, Jorge M. Pérez, Miami, Rick & Kathy Hilton, California and Wendy Fisher, London.

Lluís Barba was one of the first finalists of the inaugural 2009 Young Masters Art Prize in London. The artist exhibited at the European Pavilion of the 2017 Venice Biennale.

Lottie Davies

b. 1971, Guildford, UK

Lottie Davies’ work is concerned with stories and personal histories, the tales and myths we use to structure our lives: memories, life-stories, beliefs. She takes inspiration from classical and modern painting, cinema and theatre as well as the imaginary worlds of literature. She employs a deliberate reworking of our visual vocabulary, playing on notions of nostalgia, visual conventions and subconscious ‘looking habits’, with the intention of evoking a sense of recognition, narrative and movement.

Davies was born in Guildford, UK, in 1971. After a degree in Moral Philosophy, Logic & Metaphysics at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, she moved back to England and has since been based in London and then Cornwall as a photographer, artist and writer. She is regularly invited to speak about her work internationally and throughout UK, in galleries and institutions as well as universities and colleges. Davies is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Lecturer at the Institute of Photography at Falmouth University in Cornwall.

Lottie Davies has won recognition in numerous awards, including the Association of Photographers’ Awards, the International Color Awards, and the Schweppes Photographic Portrait Awards. Her work has garnered international acclaim; Quints (‘Memories and Nightmares’) won First Prize at the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Awards 2008 at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Viola As Twins won the Photographic Arte Laguna Prize in Venice in 2011, and she won the Young Masters Art Prize in 2012. Her seven-year long project Quinn was widely exhibited across the UK and subsequently published in a limited-edition monograph of the same name in 2021.

Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, described Davies’ work as “brilliantly imaginative”.

Charles Moxon

b. UK

Charles Moxon is a contemporary British portrait painter based in London and New York. Born in the United Kingdom and spending a portion of his formative years in the south of France, Moxon developed a passion for the arts at the young age of seven. His portraits draw upon a combination of composition and technique from the Dutch 17th century Old Masters to which he adds the observance and hyperrealism of modern photorealism. Moxon uses layers of translucent glaze in a fashion reminiscent of the seventeenth-century Northern European painters, which help to create the light and depth he is aiming for. This modern touch on a traditional art form is what has attracted many of Moxon’s sitters and audiences.

Charles Moxon received a BA (Hons) degree in painting in 2013 from Camberwell College, University of Arts, London. Moxon has exhibited and worked extensively across Europe and North America. His portraits have been exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London in both 2016 and 2020 as part of the BP Portrait Award, the most recent for his portrait of Sharmadean Reid MBE.

In 2022 he was Awarded a Certificate of Excellence by the Portrait Society of America and exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Exhibition in London.

Fabiano Parisi

b. 1977, Rome, Italy

“I use only natural light and execute my shootings early in the morning. The colours and chiaroscuro are at their best at this time of day and are left untouched by digital image manipulation software.” - Fabiano Parisi.

Parisi’s photographs have an honesty and integrity that is part of what makes them so inviting. The artist often selects buildings with frescoed walls, which create an illusion of a painterly surface in his photographs and a textural sensibility that belies the photograph’s flat surface. His method highlights the patina of these forgotten places.

The artist prints his work himself onto carefully chosen papers that enhance and maximise his colours and tones. Parisi has a strong relationship to Art History; the subject of the ruin was prevalent in the 18th and 19th Centuries, and interest is still strong today as evidenced by Tate Britain’s 2014 exhibition ‘Ruin Lust’. From painters such as Piranesi to Turner to Constable, Parisi is part of an important genre in art.

Fabiano Parisi began his career as a photographer following a degree in Psychology, coming to photography through a project photographing derelict asylums, which sparked his interest in the abandoned buildings which are the subject of his art practice today.

He has two ongoing series: The Empire of Light and Il Mondo Che Non Vedo (The World I Do Not See). The latter title is taken from a collection of poems by Fernando Pessoa, a hint at the poetic qualities of Parisi’s work.

What is so striking about Parisi’s work is his use of light, his relationship not just to history but to the theme of the ruin in Art History, and the composition and surface of his work. The power of Parisi’s work lies in the strength and command of his image-making, never straying from a strictly symmetrical approach, which allows the viewer to assume his viewpoint within the building, the wide-angle lens giving a sense of depth and breadth, without compromising on detail.

Parisi participated in the 54th Venice Biennale, Italian Pavilion and in Fotografia Festival Internazionale di Roma in 2012 at the Macro Museum.

In 2010 he was the winner of the Celeste Prize International for photography in New York; in 2012 he was shortlist for the Arte Laguna Prize, Venice where he was awarded a special Prize and in 2012 & 2014 he was shortlisted & announced finalist for the Young Masters Art Prize (a not-for-profit initiative presented by The Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London).

Fabiano Parisi was a finalist for the Young Masters Art Prize in 2012 and 2014 and is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Elise Ansel

b. New York City, USA

In her work, Ansel translates Old Master paintings into a contemporary pictorial language. She mines art historical imagery for color and narrative structure. Her paintings use the Old Masters as points of departure. They move into abstraction by transforming the representational content, which is obfuscated, if not entirely obscured, by her focus on color, gesture and the materiality of the paint. Ansel’s work strikes a balance between conscientious precision and irrational improvisation.

She begins with a series of small spontaneous oil studies. Using renaissance methods and a grid, she transcribes these into large scale paintings. The large paintings embrace the choreography of the small works with an increased emphasis on color and gesture. Spontaneity, instinct and intuition eclipse rational, linear thinking during the process of making the small works. The large paintings, however, are more considered. Her work fuses accident and design, intuition and intellect, abandon and constraint. The real subject becomes the substance and surface of oil paint, the range of its applications, the ways it can be used to celebrate life.

Ansel deconstructs pictorial language and authorial agency in order to excavate and liberate meanings buried beneath the surface of the works from which her paintings spring. Old Master paintings were, for the most part, created by men for men. Abstraction allows her to interrupt this one sided narrative and transform it into a sensually capacious non-narrative form of visual communication that embraces multiple points of view.

Elise Ansel was born and raised in New York City. Ansel received a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University in 1984. While at Brown, she studied art at both Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design. She worked briefly in the film industry before deciding to make painting her first order medium. Ansel has exhibited her work throughout the United States and in Europe. Her works are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences.

Elise Ansel was nominated for the Young Masters Art Prize in 2013 and 2014.

EVEWRIGHT

b. 1964, UK

EVEWRIGHT, is a British artist, with parentage from Jamaica. He is multi-disciplinary visual installation artist, who challenges public environments to make spaces for Black British stories to exist and thrive. His work is a conscious ‘mash up’ of drawing, sculpture, combined with digital film and live installations. He explores the intricate connections between the body and our experience of the modern environment, and communicates this through bold interactive art, also using urban and rural landscapes as his canvas. He creates mirrors where he can see and recognise himself to instigate conversations in the mainstream about what it means to be Black and British in the UK today.

His sculptural work, includes the £££ Kissi Pennies $$$, a series of sculptures that challenges the notion of value, currency, slavery and trade that is inspired by modern day migration and the ancient African former currency Kissi Pennies. EVEWRIGHT is also concerned with socio-political issues of place, space and the movement of peoples. He explores film, storytelling in relation to drawing and his practice goes beyond the decorative and the 2D, employing drawing as a documentary tool to give voice to hidden stories and hidden peoples.

"I first met Cynthia Corbett in 2014 when exhibiting my artwork Walking Drawings Across the Estuaries Installation at the Royal Academy London. I was invited to exhibit at Cynthia Corbett’s Young Masters Exhibition that year which helped to grow my early career. Since then I have achieved further group shows and art installations such as, Tilbury Bridge Walkway of Memories ( 2021-2023), Belongings (2023) and a solo exhibitions Libation at Firstsite Gallery (2023). I have also exhibited and am currently developing new artworks as part of a residency at the National Maritime Museum London in 2025 and have achieved national awards. I am delighted to take part in Cynthia Corbett’s latest retrospective as part of my ongoing artistic journey." - EVEWRIGHT, October 2025

EVEWRIGHT has participated in several group and solo exhibitions including: Royal Academy of Arts Exhibition 2025

Oliver Jones

b. 1985, Shropshire, UK

Flesh, with particular reference to the face is the main angle of critique throughout Oliver Jones’ work, acting as a social commentary and aiming to question notions of identity whilst scrutinising the subtle variations, colours, structures and complexities of its surface. His current work examines the way the media and industry advertise, manipulate and exploit the image of flesh and the exterior, inducing society to become familiar and accepting of an image that is far removed from the everyday. This is no new ploy and throughout history the exterior façade has been an image of great intrigue since the inception of the mirror and again with the camera accentuating our narcissistic and vain traits prompting a pursuit of perfection or alternate reflection that can often lead to a shrouded image of reality.

Jones studied at Margaret Street School of Art in Birmingham (part of the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design), graduating in 2008 with a first class honours degree in Fine Art and winning the Associated Architects Prize. Since then he has exhibited in many group exhibitions both nationally and internationally including: the Threadneedle Prize, UAMO City Tour in Munich, Intimate Spaces, Galerie8, and SELF at the Mall Galleries. His work is collected widely, and held in notable collections in Frankfurt, California and Istanbul.

2014 saw the opening of Jones’ first solo show in Los Angeles with Gusford Gallery; in the same year he was also awarded a Highly Commended prize at the Young Masters Art Prize with which his work has toured since.

Matt Smith

b. 1971, Cambridgeshire, UK

Matt Smith is a multi award-winning artist based in Ireland and England. He is well known for his site-specific work in museums, galleries and historic houses. Using clay, textiles and their associated references, he explores how cultural organisations operate using techniques of institutional critique and artist intervention. Smith is interested in how history is a constantly selected and refined narrative that presents itself as a fixed and accurate account of the past and how, through taking objects and repurposing them in new situations, this can be brought to light. Of particular interest to him is how museums can be reframed into alternative perspectives.

Matt J Smith is best known for his work with museums and collections. He recontextualises museum collections to consider overlooked or erased narratives, often incorporating LGBTQ+ histories and legacies of colonisation. Solo exhibitions include Losing Venus at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Flux: Parian Unpacked at the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge (UK), Who Owns History at Hove Museum and Queering he Museum at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham Art Gallery (UK) and the Victoria and Albert Museum London (UK). Notable group shows have included Dublin Castle (Ireland), Gustavsberg Konsthall, Stockholm (Sweden) the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (Ireland) and the Foundling Museum (UK). In 2015/16 he was artist in residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and in 2024/25 Artist in Residence at Holocaust Centre North. He holds a PhD from the University of Brighton, was Professor at Konstfack University, Stockholm and currently teaches at the Royal College of Art.

In 2020 he was awarded the Brookfield Prize at Collect and the Contemporary Art Society acquired a body of his work for Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. His work is also held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, National Museum of Scotland, National Museum of Northern Ireland and the Crafts Council collection.

Matt Smith is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery and was the winner of the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize in 2014.

Amy Hughes

b. 1985, Dewsbury, UK.

“Amy Jayne Hughes reinterprets historical vase designs while nodding at the original aesthetic yet leaving space for the clay.

“Hughes’ vases resemble pixelated images of historic vases; they are sketched from the old but resemble nothing of the past - they occupy a place entirely of their own. Hughes’ blind contour drawing technique captures the object's essence while acknowledging the clay material and her role in the reinterpretation: Fingerprints left in the clay and drawn upon cardboard-like pieces stuck to the vase trace Hughes’ artistic process. The play is consciously left visible.

“Hughes’ work is both a celebration of our ceramic past and reclaiming space for clay.” - Jesper Nøddeskov, Homo Faber Guide.

Amy Jayne Hughes is a Ceramicist, a clay purist and enthusiast. She adores working with her medium and the possibilities that it allows. Primarily a hand builder in her practice, Hughes enjoys combining traditional making techniques and exploring form and decoration and establishing dialogues between the two. Working with an awareness of clay, she feels it is important to leave traces of material identity on a piece to celebrate the uniqueness of it and the wonderfully idiosyncratic ways in which it behaves, highlighting and drawing attention to rather than covering over. This allows for brushstrokes and dribbles of slip, raw cut and torn edges, exposed joints and considered application of glaze.

Taking inspiration from historically significant ceramic objects and collections, Hughes strives to reference the originals whilst reinterpreting and reinventing, to make them more accessible and breathe a fresh life into them. Working with a cultural awareness, Hughes seeks to take such pieces to new audiences and find a place in contemporary culture for them. Sources for her recent ceramic explorations include Grecian, Islamic and 18th century French Porcelain.

Hughes loves to draw and her collections often involve exploring different methods of interpreting her drawings into clay. Most recently, taking a collage-like approach, Hughes uses enlarged elements of her sketches, tracing them directly onto her clay surfaces in decorating slip and attaching them onto her coil and slab-built forms, creating exciting patterns and shapes and working with a colourful and lively painterly approach. The making process informs the composition, not knowing how the final piece may look.

Amy Jayne Hughes studied MA Ceramics & Glass at Royal College of Art, London, 2008-2010 and BA Ceramics at Loughborough University, 2004-2007. She also won the City and Guilds Life Drawing Award.

Notable solo exhibitions include: ‘Garniture’ Croome Court, Worcester, Arts Council England funded (2018), and ‘Vase & Cover’ Room 141, V&A Museum, London Design Festival (2018). Hughes’ notable group exhibitions include: Art Miami, Cynthia Corbett Gallery (2022-23), COLLECT, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Somerset House (2021-23), British Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery (2022-23), London Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery (2022), ‘Piranesi 300: A Visionary Revisited’ Dublin Castle & the Casino at Marino, Dublin (2022), ‘Leach 100’ The Leach Pottery, St Ives (2022), ‘Artefact’, Vessel Gallery (2021), ‘Out Of the Blue’ 50 Years of Designers Guild, The Fashion and Textile Museum, London (2020), COLLECT, Vessel Gallery (2019), ‘Renewed Past’ CODA Museum, Netherlands (2016), ‘AWARD’, British Ceramics Biennial (2015), and 'SWEET 18’, Castle of Hingene, Belgium (2015).

Hughes has been nominated for many prestigious awards and prizes. She was a shortlisted Artist for the Brookfield Properties Craft Award (2023); nominated for the Perrier-Jouët Arts Salon Prize by Barney Hare Duke (2016); shortlisted for the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize, (2014); shortlisted for the Constance Fairness Foundation Award, December (2011); awarded the Anglo-Swedish Scholarship Bursary (2010); and selected to represent the UK in ‘New Talent’ at the European Ceramic Context, Denmark (2014). Hughes was also winner of Best Community Public Art 2013 project with Pump House Gallery for ‘Imaginariums’

Hughes has undertaken residencies in the UK and Internationally including: V&A Ceramics & Industry Artist in Residence in collaboration with 1882Ltd (April – September 2015); Siobhan Davies Dance Studio with Manifold Studio, (July – September 2013); Anglo-Swedish Scholarship Exchange, Konstfack School, Stockholm (January – April 2011)

Hughes’ work has been featured in Ceramic Review, ‘A Modern Decadence’, CR 309, Annie La Santo (2021); ‘Encore! The New Artisans’, Olivier Dupon, Thames & Hudson, (2015); ‘Collectives: The Model for Success’, Edith Garcia, Ceramics Monthly, (2020); ‘Studio Ceramics’, Alun Graves (2023); ‘Getting to know Amy Hughes’, India Miller, FAIRE Magazine (2023). Hughes was recently included in the Homo Faber Guide of Artisans and Master Craftsmen, curated by The Michelangelo Foundation (2023).

Hughes’ work has been acquired internationally. Collections include: Hendelsbanken, Sweden (2011), ‘Tryst’, V&A permanent collection (2016), and Private Collections in USA, UK, France, Sweden, and Netherlands.

Amy Hughes was a finalist for the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize in 2014 and is internationally represented by the Cythia Corbett Gallery. She was highly commended for the Brookfield Properties Craft Award 2023.

Isabelle Van Zeijl

b. 1978, Netherlands

In a contemporary art world that condemns beauty as camouflage for conceptual shallowness, championing high aesthetics is nothing short of rebellion. Dutch photographer Isabelle Van Zeijl takes female beauty ideals from the past, and sabotages them in the context of today. As a women she experiences prejudices against women; misogyny in numerous ways including sex discrimination, belittling/violence against women and sexual objectification. Van Zeijl aestheticises these prejudices in her work to visually discuss this troubling dichotomy, presenting a new way of seeing female beauty. An oppressive idealisation of beauty is tackled in her work through unique female character and emotion.

Van Zeijl is invested in her images. By using subjects that intrigue and evoke emotion, she reinvents herself over and over and has created a body of work to illustrate these autobiographical narratives. Her work takes from all she experiences in life - she is both model, creator, object and subject. Going beyond the realm of individual expression, so common in the genre of self-portraiture, she strives to be both universal and timeless.

Isabelle Van Zeijl, born and based in the Netherlands is an internationally acclaimed Fine Art Photographer. She was nominated for the Prix De La Photographie Paris, The Fine Art Photography Awards and was one of the winners of The Young Masters 2017 Emerging Woman Art Prize, London. Her work is held in prominent private & public collections in the USA, Europe, UK, Australia and Asia.

Isabelle Van Zeijl is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery and was the winner of the Young Masters Emerging Woman Art Prize in 2017.

Lucille Lewin

b. 1948, South Africa

Lucille Lewin is a South African born British artist working in porcelain and glass. Lucille Lewin’s work is the result of research into the origins of 18th century European porcelain, and the alchemists who invented it. The work references the Victorian Cabinet of Curiosities, and the early microscopic photographs of the natural world by Karl Blosfeldt. Lewin takes great inspiration from the crystal rooms at the Science Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Lewin’s sculptural ceramic objects explore the relationship between form, chemistry and process. Lewin’s latest works in porcelain and glass are part of an ongoing series The Time Between Time which looks at how we find ourselves as humans in this chaotic world of ours.

Founder and director of Whistles (1976-2001) and Creative Director of Liberty (2007-2008), Lewin left fashion for a career in sculpture with a Diploma in Fine Art and Ceramics from CityLit (2014). She received her MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art in 2017. Recent exhibitions include: The Society of Designer Craftsmen, Mall Galleries, London, 2015; The Emerging & Established, Christie’s, London 2017; and Material: Earth: The New British Clay Movement, Messums, Somerset, 2017 and a solo exhibition at Connolly, London, 2017-2018.

Lucille Lewin is the winner of the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize, 2017.

Liane Lang

b. 1975, Germany

Liane Lang is an artist based in London. Born in Germany she studied at NCAD in Dublin and completed a BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College followed by a Postgraduate Diploma at the Royal Academy, where she graduated in 2006. Her work is concerned with notions of animacy, which she investigates through sculpture, photography and video works. Many of Lang’s works examine museum objects and the biographies they attempt to narrate, modes of display and the verisimilitude of art objects, particularly figurative sculptures and political monuments. Recent projects have included residencies in Hungary and Latvia, where the artist used photography and animation to stage interventions with monuments from the Socialist era.

She has exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad and her work is held in a number of notable collections. In 2017 she was shortlisted for The Young Masters Art Prize.

Liron Kroll

b. 1980, Israel

For over a decade, Liron Kroll has expanded the boundaries of photographic practice by blending photomontage techniques with innovative technologies. An award-winning artist and MA graduate of the Royal College of Art, Kroll is based in London, where her work spans photography, video art, and immersive installations. Both bold and intimate, her work explores how trends in popular photography shape personal and collective identities. The uncanny compositions she creates challenge traditional perceptions of photography’s relationship with time and space. Through deconstructing and reconstructing visual worlds, she creates evocative realities that uncover profound and unsettling truths. Kroll’s work has been exhibited at prominent galleries such as Eyebeam Gallery N.Y, ‘The Other Art Fair’ London and ‘Fresh Paint Art Fair’ in Tel Aviv as well as a solo show ‘Sand Box’ at Zemack Contemporary Art Gallery.

Liron Kroll has been selected for the Young Masters 'for the love of art history' open call 2025.

Foster White

b. 1993, USA

Philly born, Maryland raised and based in DC, Foster started his journey with still photography in high school. Being behind the camera, he was exposed to many experiences and perspectives. as well as a newfound appreciation for light and the process of capturing it. Portraiture forced him to find out what he thought was interesting about a subject, then devise a way to capture it honestly. This has captivated Foster from the very beginning. Currently, portraiture is his main form of expression. Each project is an attempt to push the artist's understanding of how light's interaction with a subject can shape the viewer's interpretation of the subject.

This series emerges from a desire to work through touch, material, and chance. My process is deliberately physical: I burn the prints, using soot to darken areas and guide the eye, sometimes letting the entire piece ignite until an effect surfaces that suggests a deeper meaning. These interventions make disruption and unpredictability inseparable from the image, echoing a painterly balance between control and spontaneity.

The subject is Milan Dixon, a model and close friend. Her bold features and soft presence embody a dynamic duality. Her deep skin tone became the anchor for the atmosphere of each image, with the world of the photograph built around it, never distracting but always accentuating and complementing her presence. Rather than imposing a fixed story, I invite ambiguity. Withheld details encourage viewers to enter the emotional atmosphere her energy carries.

Foster’s inspiration comes largely from photographers like Saul Leiter, Gordon Parks, Slim Aarons and Vivian Maier.

Giggs Kgole

b. 1997, South Africa

Kgole’s works are an exposition of the interplay between the identities of people living in rural Limpopo and the world which they inhabit. The artist grew up in a Limpopo village, South Africa and tells vivid human stories about the experiences of people who live there. They are stories that are untold to an urban audience, to whom rural South Africa is a hidden landscape. They tell tales of struggle, of abandonment, of promises broken and dreams deferred. They speak of resilience in the face of everyday injustice, of resistance through the simple act of living.

Kgole’s work is typified by his use of Anaglyphs, whereby two versions of his composite photographic images are printed in different colours (typically blue and red) onto canvas. A technique called Anaglyphing of which was used in films in the 1850s, Kgole brings back to life in his masterpieces to tell Untold African Stories. Kgole is also a multi Award Winning young master who was recently named as one of the Mail & Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans, he is widely collected in Africa, Italy, France, London and Privately collected in Monaco.

Completing his 6 month artist residency with UndiscoveredCanvas in France in 2019, he hopes to keep moving and inspiring people through his story journey through life.

SaeRi Seo

b. 1992, Korea

The ‘Moon Jar’ is a representative piece of Korean traditional pottery of the Joseon Dynasty that has contributed the elevating the reputation of Korean ceramics worldwide. Historically, the moon jar was associated only with male roles, as women were not allowed to produce or access the studio due to the belief that they brought bad luck. To overcome a childhood and adolescence coloured by this belief (and accompanying abuse), SaeRi began destroying her works to reveal her trauma, incorporating shapes from Korean representative ceramics as her cultural background influenced her mental struggles. By detonating the beautiful pottery, she stepped forward and started communicating with the world.

SaeRi Seo studied ceramics for her BA at Seoul Women’s University, and went on to complete a Masters in Ceramics and Makers at Cardiff Metropolitan University in 2022. Recent exhibitions and awards include: NAE Open 2023, New Art Exchange (2023), RBA Rising Stars Exhibition, The Royal Over-Seas League (2023), and nominated as a finalist for the BADA Art Award (2022).

SaeRi Seo was selected for Homo Faber 2024: The Journey of Life, coinciding with the Venice Biennale, further establishing her presence in the international art scene. SaeRi Seo made her debut at Collect with Cynthia Corbett Gallery in 2024 and will soon showcase her work at the prestigious British Art Fair later this year, marking another significant milestone in her artistic career.

SaeRi Seo was the winner of the Young Masters Emerging Woman Artist Award in 2023.

Jemma Gowland

b. 1965, UK

Jemma Gowland’s work explores the way that girls are constrained from birth to conform to an appearance and code of behaviour, to present a perfect face, and maintain the expectations of others. The use of porcelain, or of stoneware with layered disrupted surfaces, denote value yet describe the vulnerability beneath. Her most recent work draws on the traditional history of the figurine, from Meissen to the present; echoing the white unglazed finish with gold lustre. Current themes build on this tradition, with its symbolism of the female figure as ornament and object, to highlight issues of growing up female in the modern world. 

Jemma Gowland trained for a BSc in Engineering Product Design, working in industrial design and architectural model making before becoming a teacher of Design and Technology, a career she followed for many years. She transitioned from teaching in 2014 to pursue ceramics full-time. Her growing fascination with ceramics prompted her to pursue further studies, earning the City Lit Ceramics Diploma in London and graduating in 2019. Awards and exhibitions include: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2023), Royal Cambrian Academy of Art Open Exhibition (2023), Collect Open (2022), Bevere Graduate Award (2019-20), and Potclays student award, Art in Clay (2019). In 2024, Jemma’s work was featured in the Newstead Project, celebrating the Byron bicentenary at his home, Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire. That same year, she made her debut at Collect with the Cynthia Corbett Gallery and was showcased at the prestigious British Art Fair, marking another major milestone in her artistic career.

Jemma Gowland was Highly Commended for the Young Masters Emerging Woman Artist Award in 2023.

Ebony Russell

b. Australia

Ebony Russell is an Australian ceramic artist who uses an unorthodox approach to construct ceramic sculptures. Her unique technique was developed out of an interest in gendered aesthetics, labour and traditional craft practices where Russell methodically pipes porcelain in series of intricate layers to build gravity- defying forms. Challenging the traditional making processes of decorative vessels; in her works the decoration becomes the structure, and the boundaries between the two are erased. Exploring established perceptions of cultural and artistic practices that were once exclusively coded as feminine and thus insignificant, Russell’s work celebrates the decorative, promiscuous aesthetics and politics of purity; the superficial, excess and delight – with pleasure.

Russell completed a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Honours) at Monash University in 2003 and in 2019 graduated from The National Art School Sydney with a Masters of Fine Art. Russell has won many awards including the Franz International Rising Star Award in 2018 and the Meroogal Women’s Art Prize in 2023. Major exhibitions include ‘Think Pinker’, Gavlak Gallery Los Angeles (2023), ‘SABOTAJE ESTEìTICO’, Yusto Giner Gallery, Spain (2022), ‘Halcyon Days’, Modern Eden Gallery, San Francisco (2022), ‘Clay Dynasty’, The Powerhouse Museum (2022), ‘Interconnected’, NERAM (2022), Young Masters Art Prize, London (2023), Teetering on the Brink, Claire Oliver Gallery, Harlem New York (2024), and Homo Faber, Venice (2024).

Press:
Ebony Russell Announced as the Winner of Brookfield Properties Craft Award 2025
Ceramic Review Feature: "Piped Dreams"
Artsy’s "5 Artists on Our Radar" – March 2025
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Ebony Russell was Highly Commended for the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize 2023 and winner of the Brookfield Properties Craft Award 2025 in collaboration with Collect Art Fair, Crafts Council and Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Dola Posh

b. 1991, Nigeria

Dola Posh is a Black/Nigerian-born visual storyteller living in England.

Dola finds inspiration in her life journey, which transformed after her pregnancy. In her work, she explores the loss of self-identity and postpartum depression, conveying strength, vulnerability, and creative perseverance.

She won the Leica Women Foto Project Award in 2024. Her photograph Care from the Omo Mi series graced billboards around the UK, commissioned by Artichoke Trust and Gallery Org. Facebook has licensed her work, and she received Leica's UK grant for the Women in Focus Photo Project.

EyeMama included her work in the book Poetic Truths of Home and Motherhood. Her photo, Mother’s Day Year 3, was exhibited and sold at the Young Masters exhibition. She facilitated an NHS workshop on mental health and postpartum depression and continues to do so. She also spoke at Ravensbourne University about women and photography for Capture One.

Dola continues to use visual narratives and words to tell the stories of people, Black women, and mothers regarding mental and sexual health and expression, as a mother herself.

Dola Posh was a finalist for the Young Masters Art Prize in 2023.

Nourine Hammad

b. 1988, UK

Nourine Hammad is a contemporary Egyptian-British artist currently living and working in London. Her work is characterised by meticulously crafted and highly detailed photo and hyper-realistic drawings that explore issues around representation, truth and deception. Referencing a range of sources, from popular cartoon figures such as Mickey Mouse and Pinocchio to inflatable balloon letters from the Arabic alphabet or Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Hammad takes the icons of capitalist culture and historical belief systems and reflects them back at us with uncanny precision and satirical wit. Her pop and vivid images, which often employ trompe l’oeil techniques, are deceptive, and delightfully so. They are also deeply subversive with the effect of drawing into question many of the representational values and attachments to truth we all hold dear.

Nourine Hammad was the winner of the Young Masters Lerouge Knight Cross Cultural Award 2023.

Natasha Muluswela

b. 1995, Zimbabwe

Natasha’s work takes a conceptual standpoint by integrating moving images, imagination and fine art, reflecting her keen interest on how these three things can intertwine together to tell a different narrative. She uses symbolism of faceless figures to challenge the viewers’ preconceived perceptions and ideologies of what it means to occupy space as a migrant, shedding light on the deep-rooted realities of racism, discrimination and marginalisation in a post-colonial oppressive system. The work challenges views on not only Africa’s political past and present but its potential and future.

Natasha Muluswela is a self-taught, Zimbabwean-born visual artist based in the United Kingdom. She graduated in 2017, obtaining a degree in French and Spanish at Nottingham Trent University. She has been selected for the ING Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries (2021), Threshold, D Contemporary Gallery, London (2021), The Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize 2019, London, (2019), and Black History Month’, at Uber, London (2019). In 2022 she was awarded the ACME Alternative Pathway Award, receiving a six-month long studio residency, materials, and a bursary from ACME.

Natasha Muluswela was awarded Highly Commended for Young Masters Emerging Woman Artist Award 2023.

Sadie Lee

b. 1967, UK

Sadie Lee is an award-winning British figurative painter. Her realistic, challenging paintings focus on the representation of women, sexuality, gender and the aging body. Her paintings investigate and identify with the personal politics of vulnerability, defiance and notions of ‘otherness’, with a strong sense of solidarity for her subject. Her distinctive clear, linear style shares much with the heightened realism of German artists such as Rudolf Schlichter and Christian Schad from the Neue Sachlichkeit movement of the 1930s.

She has been selected to show work in many group shows including exhibitions at The ICA, Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art and the Museum of London. Solo shows include the National Portrait Gallery, London, Manchester City Art Gallery, Schwules Museum, Berlin, and the Town Hall Art Gallery, Slovenia. Her 1997 solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery ‘A Dying Art: Ladies of the Burlesque’ was a result of winning the prestigious BP Travel Award. Sadie Lee’s paintings are in private collections including those of Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell; Hugh Cornwell, lead singer of seminal Punk band The Stranglers, and the world-renowned American collector Candice B. Groot

Sadie Lee has been awarded Highly Commended for the Young Masters Art Prize 2023 as well as winner of the Young Masters People’s Choice Award 2023.

Olga Morozova

b. 1972, Kyiv, Ukraine

Olga Morozova received a master's degree in painting from the National Academy of Arts and Architecture in 1998. She has participated in more than twenty solo exhibitions and over one hundred group exhibitions and international projects. In 2019, Morozova represented Ukraine in Dubai at the exhibition ‘Women Artists from 100 Countries’; in 2022 she took part in the exhibition of Ukrainian artists as part of the Venice Biennale; and in December 2022 she will represent Ukraine at the Asian Art Biennale in Bangladesh.

Morozova consciously chose the Fauvist palette, adopting the strong colours and fierce brushwork style. Working intuitively, Morozova boldly layers colours to create eye-catching compositions. The powerful temperament of an outwardly fragile woman is embodied in the graphic focus on the motif, in expressive and improvisational writing, in ornamental and decorative solutions. In her works, there is a sensual Dionysianism, which is wonderfully combined with her manner of painting. Morozova’s paintings are impressive, like stained glass windows, and create a luminous aura around them.

Olga Morozova collaborated in November 2022 with artist and jeweller Phoebe Walsh on the exhibition Flowers From The Front Line. Flowers From The Frontline Series was on show at the Archivist exhibit, in the Garden Museum, from November 12th to December 22nd 2022. After touring, the series will be auctioned individually to raise money for Artists in Ukraine: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/ In addition, filmmaker Carmela Corbett is currently working on a feature length documentary entitled Flowers From The Frontline, which will explore the artist’s life and the power of art created during war.

Olga Morozova was selected for the Young Masters 'for the love of art history' open call and the Young Masters 'Sweet 16' Retrospective in 2025.

Emilie Taylor

b.1980, Sheffield, UK

Emilie Taylor uses heritage crafts, particularly traditional slipware, to interpret and represent post-industrial landscapes. Emilie is interested in the vessel or container as a metaphor for how we seek to contain communities, and community rituals, within British society, and has an ongoing interest in the firing process as alchemically potent and symbolic of change. 

'I handbuild my work using coils or slabs, and decorate using slip, sgraffito and handmade stencils. Once a piece is built in clay I layer the decoration with different thicknesses of slip and a combination of tight formal pattern and looser hand drawn and printed slip designs.

I then draw landscapes and narratives onto the decorated surface, figures and buildings I will have photographed and drawn when researching the themes for the work. I sometimes need to build up three to four layers of slip before using a sgraffito tool to add lines and movement drawing in the detail. After a bisque fire the pieces are glazed and fired again to stoneware temperature. I then add 18ct gold lustre or handprinted gold transfers and fire the work a third and final time to bond the gold with the glaze.'

Her work offers new interpretation to the contemporary urban context and its severance with ties to past community rituals. Large pieces and installations blur the boundaries between Gallery and Museum, Fine Art and the anthropological elements of Craft.

Emilie draws inspiration from folklore, feminism, and community dynamics, often referencing ancient stories and local histories in her creations. Her work, deeply rooted in slipware traditions, tells personal and political stories, challenging contemporary narratives. Emilie's pieces are exhibited globally, including at 'Lives Less Ordinary' at Two Temple Place, and are held in prestigious public collections such as the V&A and Gallery Oldham. She received the Cynthia Corbett Gallery & Young Masters ‘Focus on the Female’ Award in 2022, affirming her impact on the art world.

Emilie Trained in Fine Art (BA hons First Class) at Liverpool John Moores, graduating 2001 and has a Masters in Art Psychotherapy that informs her ideas about the anthropological significance of making in communities and community ritual. She has lectured about her practice at the Royal College, Cheltenham Literature Festival, on behalf of Arts Council England and the Crafts Council. As well as at many universities and art institutions. Emilie has completed residencies in the UK and abroad, and has exhibited at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Ruthin Craft Centre, Gallery Oldham, and the Arts & Crafts House Blackwell. She had a solo exhibition (Tubthumping) which opened on March 8th 2023 at the National Civil War Centre. The body of work included in the show took as a subject the experiences of women in the early modern period and explored the similarities linking them and the experiences of women today. Her work forms part of public and private collections. In addition, Cynthia Corbett Gallery & its not-for-profit art initiative Young Masters Art Prize were invited by the Michelangelo Foundation to feature Emilie Taylor's artwork in their inaugural Homo Faber exhibition in Venice during the Biennale d'Arte in April 2022.

In 2024 Emilie will be working with Bradford Museums to create new pieces for their collection and will also be working with the Stradling collection in Bristol to respond to the slipware ceramics of Sam Haile held in their collection. Both projects will culminate in exhibitions later in the year.

She will also lead an ongoing project with women exiting the criminal justice system who will be creating ceramic work for exhibition in 2025.

Emilie Taylor is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery and was the winner of the Focus On The Female Young Masters Art Award 2021.

James Robert Morrison

b. 1979, Scotland

James Robert Morrison graduated from Central Saint Martin’s in 2002 and worked in the cultural sector for 17 years before returning to an active art practice in 2019. From drawings on cigarette papers to paintings and collages embellished with embroidery - James approaches his use of media in a playful way with complete openness, while consistently maintaining quality and cohesion, making it deeply personal.

Since returning to his art practice, he has been shortlisted for the Bridget Riley Fellowship (2023-24), RBSA Drawing Prize (2023), and Derwent Art Prize (2022), was selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2021), won the Mervyn Metcalf Purchase Prize at the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition (2021), and was awarded a special commendation at the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize (2020). His work is held in the UK Government Art Collection, Neal Baer Collection, and private collections in the UK, USA, and China.

James Robert Morrison Has Been Highly Commended for the Young Masters Rudolph Blume Foundation Acquisition Award 2025.

Jo Holdsworth

b. UK

Jo Holdsworth is an award-winning contemporary British artist known for her paintings of elongated and reflected figures often in blue and grey tones. Her work has been on book, album and magazine covers and is held in public and private collections.

Often embracing themes such as hope and loyalty, Jo’s life-affirming paintings attract a strong following and are collected throughout the world. Her striking and unique paintings have bold, cinematic appeal as well as being admired for their distinct colour palette and loose, spontaneous brush work.

‘It’s the mixture of calm beauty and ambiguity throughout all of Jo Holdsworth’s paintings that mesmerises the viewer.’ London art critic Tabish Khan writing recently about Jo Holdsworth’s work in World of FAD.

Jo's painting featured in the Young Masters show is part of a new series that delves into her passion for French art, its painters, and its rich history. Each piece is inspired by places that French painters lived or worked in. The paintings also explore colour palettes used by particular painters or art movements and in some of the pieces the painter themselves may appear in one of the shadowy figures. Growing up Jo’s family had a house in Provence and she was enthralled by the views painted by French artists and the magnificent countryside..

Jo’s painting in the Young Masters show, ‘Café, Aix-en-Provence’ explores Jo’s love of Paul Cézanne and features Aix-en-Provence where Cézanne was born. Says Jo ‘I love the colours and atmosphere of Aix and its indelible link with Cezanne and his artistic genius and struggles over the years.’ Her highly successful Solo Show at 60 Threadneedle Street in the City of London finished at the end of January 2024. Oher recent exhibitions include Neptune Wimbledon in July 2024, and Affordable Art Fairs Hampstead and Battersea.

Jo Holdsworth has been Highly Commended for the Young Masters Rudolph Blume Foundation Acquisition Award 2025.

Emilia Momen

b. 2001, UK

Emilia Momen is a figurative oil painter based in London. Her work documents the people she encounters, drawing from her upbringing in London among painters, where she developed a deep understanding of light and colour. Momen attended Fine Arts School in Hampstead and her first oil painting at 17 was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. She went on to study at Camberwell, then Charles Cecil and Polimoda in Florence.

She had her first solo show at 21 with Ronchini Gallery in Mayfair and has since exhibited internationally at art fairs such as Dallas and Miami. Momen has been in exhibitions such as Behind the artist Open Call – Virtual Exhibition 2024, Sound & Vision exhibition Bomb Factory Marleybone 2023, I Rossori Dell’arte (The Redness of Art) Ronchini Gallery 2023, and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2021.

Emillia Momen is the Winner of the Young Masters Woman Artist Award 2025.