Awards for Artists

Awards for Artists supports individuals at a timely moment in their careers, giving them the freedom to develop their creative ideas and contributing to their personal and professional growth. The awards are made every year and come with no strings attached – artists are free to use the money in whichever way they decide. Ten awards of £60,000 each are made annually, five to visual artists and five to composers.

We are happy to announce the recipients of Awards for Artists 2023, and would like to take this opportunity to thank the judges and nominators.

See the visual artists and composers for 2023 below.

2023 Visual artists

Ain Bailey

Ain Bailey

Ain Bailey is a multidisciplinary artist and DJ. Her practice involves an exploration of sonic autobiographies, architectural acoustics, live performance, as well as collaborations with performance and visual artists. Her compositions of...

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Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.)

Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.)

Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.) was established in the summer of 2018 with the intention of bringing together a community of queer, trans and non-binary black and people of colour involved in art, sound and radical activism. Follo...

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Helen Cammock

Helen Cammock

Helen Cammock is an artist whose practice spans film, photography, print, text, song and performance. Her work examines mainstream historical and contemporary narratives about Blackness, womanhood, oppression and resistance, wealth and p...

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Jamie Crewe

Jamie Crewe

Jamie Crewe is an artist working with video, text, installation, sculpture, drawing, painting and music. Their work is an ambitious and complex investigation of community, culture and self. Through poetic retellings of Ancient Greek myth...

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Imran Perretta

Imran Perretta

Imran Perretta is an artist working with the moving image, sound, installation and performance to explore ideas of power, identity, migration and belonging. His research seeks to challenge the conception of the nation state and its unila...

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2023 Composers

Nneka Cummins

Nneka Cummins

Nneka Cummins is a composer and musician, their practice has a focus on groove-inspired music which uses extended techniques to add colour and percussiveness and explores the idea of deconstruction and re-examination through sampled elec...

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Edward George

Edward George

Edward George is a multi-disciplinary artist, composer, creator and DJ. His compositions confront deep and complex themes that challenge the l...

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Hyelim Kim

Hyelim Kim

Hyelim Kim is a composer, creator, academic and solo performer of the Korean daegeum flute. Her compositional style is shaped by her background in performance training and instrumental practice alongside her academic training as an ethno...

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Francesca Pidgeon (Dilettante)

Francesca Pidgeon (Dilettante)

Francesca Pidgeon is a multi-instrumentalist and composer, who performs and composes under the moniker ‘Dilettante’. Her focus is to create challenging, interesting and expansive pop music which bridges the gap between 'art music' and 'p...

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Karine Polwart and Pippa Murphy

Karine Polwart and Pippa Murphy

Karine Polwart and Pippa Murphy are a co-composing partnership that explores landscape and memory, mythology and scientific inquiry, via folk song, spoken word, sound design, electronics, and formal orchestrations. They’re fascinated by ...

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