Chinese-born artist wins 2015 Catlin Prize

Associated media

Art Catlin has announced that the winner of the Catlin Art Prize 2015 is Zhu Tian. Tian was awarded the £5,000 prize for a new body of work, a series of installations that continue her interest in disrupting the everyday. 

The independent panel of judges – Aaron Cezar of Delfina Foundation, Charlotte Schepke of London art space Large Glass, and George Vasey curator of the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art – commended the rest of the finalists for their commitment and the high quality of the work made for the competition.

On their selection of Zhu Tian as the overall winner, the judges commented:

 We all agreed that Tian’s presentation demonstrated particular poise and focus. She has made an impressive and coherent body of work, and organized and lit the space so as to create a compelling and unsettling journey for the viewer.

Zhu Tian's sequence of installations, divided into two separate rooms and an adjacent corridor partitioned by a steel roller extend the themes of power, interpersonal relationships and unease embedded in much of her previous work.

The Chinese-born artist, 32, graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2014 with an MA in Sculpture. She said:

I’m thrilled to be the winner of the Catlin Art Prize 2015. It has been an exciting and challenging opportunity to develop my work with incredible support. I’d like to thank Justin Hammond and the whole Art Catlin team as well as my fellow finalists. Winning the prize will give me a chance to secure my studio and continue working on my next exhibition.

Visitors to the Catlin Art Prize exhibition selected their favourite artist as part of the Visitor Vote. Over 2,000 votes were cast via ballot boxes in the gallery. Paul Schneider, 28, a Royal Academy of Arts postgraduate, was named the winner of the Visitor Vote in an extremely close-run contest and takes away the £2,000 prize.

The exhibition remains open to the public until 6p.m. on Saturday May 30 at the Londonewcastle Project Space, London. The Catlin Art Prize, curated by Justin Hammond, provides a platform for the most promising art graduates in the UK. Participating artists are selected from The Catlin Guide 2015, a nationwide survey of recent art school graduates, now widely recognized as the essential reference for collectors of emerging artists.

This year’s finalists were: Jon Baker (Chelsea College of Arts), Felicity Hammond (Royal College of Art), Oliver Hickmet (City & Guilds of London Art School), Nicholas William Johnson (Royal College of Art), Paul Schneider (Royal Academy of Arts), Lexi Strauss (Royal College of Art), Dominic Watson (The Glasgow School of Art) and Zhu Tian (Royal College of Art).

As title sponsors of the Catlin Art Prize, XL Catlin – one of the world’s leading insurers of fine art – continues to help realize the ambitions of promising new artists.

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