2023 Prize Winner

The 2023 Prize winner was Kat Anderson, receiving a £15,000 cash prize and the opportunity to present a solo exhibition at Bow Arts’ Nunnery Gallery. Anderson is a visual artist, musician and filmmaker, currently working under an artistic and research framework called ‘Episodes of Horror’, which uses the genre of horror to discuss representations of mental illness and trauma as experienced by or projected upon Black bodies in media.

Anderson’s winning work was the film John, which tells the story of a young male patient of a psychiatric hospital who witnesses the death of another Black male patient at the hands of white staff.

Anderson’s winner’s exhibition Mark of Cane, shown at the Nunnery Gallery from February – April 2024, was an ambitious undertaking, presenting a new film ‘Las, Fiya’ (‘Last, Fire’), and exploring a new media for the artist through paperworks.

Mark of Cane explored the impact of sugar on the African-Caribbean Diaspora, confronting the haunting legacies of the Industrial Revolution and the Transatlantic Slave trade. The exhibition was an immersive audio visual experience, presenting Anderson’s new fictional short film which uses the genre of Horror to explore the subjects of ancestral trauma, dispossession and the power in the return/retrieval.

To make the film, Anderson travelled to Jamaica, shooting largely on an existing sugarcane farm, weaving historical methods of harvesting sugarcane and sugar production with the cinematic concept of the ‘Origin Story’. Anderson’s new paperworks were hand-made using the extracted by-products of sugarcane and produced with the support of Prize partner UCL East as part of an ongoing residency.

I am immensely grateful to the Bow Arts team, for the work that they have put into making the East London Art Prize, an enriching experience for a community of artists and audiences alike.

The programme of events for ELAP, for my solo exhibition and now our continued work together, shows the organisation’s deep commitment to supporting emerging artists.  I look forward to the next chapter of our exchange and collaboration.

Kat Anderson

2023 Prize Runner-up

The 2023 Prize runner-up was Cora Sehgal Cuthbert, who received a year-long studio residency with Bow Arts. Sehgal Cuthbert is a multidisciplinary artist, working in media including video, sculpture, text, and photography. Her practice explores the intersections between the personal, the cultural, and a universal spirituality or humanity, creating installations or artworks that present and provoke these connections.

Sehgal Cuthbert’s shortlisted work My Life and Yours, Birth, Beer and Sex is a film commissioned by Don’t Google It, in which she explores how having dwarfism has informed her experience of drinking down the pub and sex / desire. In this work she focuses on what she sees to be the contradictory elements, such as pleasure and danger, involved in these activities and how having a disability can emphasise such contradictions.

Sehgal Cuthbert began her studio residency with Bow Arts in 2024 with a studio at our Rum Factory site. Sehgal Cuthbert has also led and participated in several events and workshops with Bow Arts since winning runner-up.   

“The studio the prize has given me has been amazing, it’s given me the space I need to breathe. This has been much needed as my practice is expanding in line with the commissions and opportunities I have received over the past year.

The generous mentorship scheme is allowing me to receive in depth, meaningful advice and guidance on several aspects of my practice. The workshops I’ve run as part of the prize have been fab! Bow Arts have been really receptive to and supportive of new workshop ideas I wanted to try out, it’s been a real pleasure running them.”

Cora Sehgal Cuthbert