Young Art 2024: JAGS artists win top prizes
Artwork by 15 talented JAGS artists were displayed at the Royal College of Art last week as part of this year’s Young Art exhibition.
Students produced artworks across the three categories for this year’s awards; Art, Drawing and Printmaking. They were praised by judges for submitting a “very strong body of work of an exemplary standard”.
The theme for this year’s exhibition is ‘Our Living World’ and all funds raised support vital research into childhood cancer and clinical trials at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health.
Congratulations to Laura (Y12) who won the first prize in the Year 10 and Year 11 category.
You can read an interview between Laura and Young Art judge Professor Christopher Orr below along with a full list of JAGS artists featured.
CO: Do you have thoughts and ideas about the characters of the figures?
L: When making my piece, I was focusing on the topic of movement and the interactions people have with their surrounding world. By creating the people on a bigger scale and fainter in comparison to the linear background, I wanted to draw attention to the people and their characters, I decided to draw them on different scales and in different colours, representing the different impacts that perhaps they felt in the area. Also by presenting them as contrasting to the background, I thought this showed the impermanence of people, in comparison to the permanent building behind them.
CO: Is this a particular street that you know?
L: The street isn’t a street I know particularly well, but one I sort of know; a street I may pass by once or twice a month. I though that the piece might therefore signify that as the background doesn’t hold any colour it sort of acts a neutral backdrop, similar to a street that doesn’t really hold a vivid memory or complete image in my head. I worked from a photograph of a street.
CO: Do you know the work of artists who are doing something similar?
L: I was inspired at the time by the artist Rosie James, an artist who explores identity in her working using mixed media. Her artwork often depicts the transience of people in places from loose strands of line and colour – which I like, due to the simplicity of line in her work. I was also looking at Claude Heath’s way of using line, particularly his methods of overlapping, which also isn’t very visible in his work. The looseness of line and idea of movement is something he focuses on heavily, and this was something I took into consideration when creating my people, in comparison to the rigid line of the buildings.
Full list of featured artists:
Year 11:
Nyneishia
Zoe
Thalia
Tara
Elroei
Eden
Peiyi
Tara
Molly
Jack
Year 12:
Abigail
Iman
Laura
Theresa
Summer
