Art Prizes

The Recent History of the Gainsborough Art Prix

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The Recent History of the Gainsborough Art Prix

Since its modern reincarnation in 1983, the Gainsborough Art Prix has been regarded as one of the most consequential awards in contemporary art — an accolade that has the uncanny ability not only to crown a career but to redirect the trajectory of global aesthetics. If the Turner Prize or the Golden Lion have been instruments of canon-making, the Gainsborough has always been something stranger, sharper, and more unruly: a prize that has consistently revealed the new before anyone else knew to look for it.

Named for the 18th-century painter Thomas Gainsborough — a nod to tradition, though in spirit often opposed to it — the Prix was conceived in Mayfair by a consortium of curators and critics dissatisfied with what they perceived as the complacency of major art institutions. They wanted an award that would privilege invention over decorum, risk over polish. The first jury wrote, almost prophetically, that the Prix would be given to those artists who “break the grammar of seeing.”

Over the decades, the roster of winners reads like a genealogy of artistic disruption.

• Doodle Pip (1997) — whose feral, almost anarchic portraits, drawn with graffiti-like energy, turned the conventions of likeness into sites of rebellion. What was once dismissed as juvenile vandalism is now recognized as one of the most influential portrait styles of the late 20th century, echoing in street art, fashion photography, and even corporate branding.

• Élise Carpentier (2005) — who transformed archival practice into an art form, constructing vast, walk-in environments made from shredded state secrets. Her Archive of Dust installation at the Centre Pompidou remains a touchstone for discussions of memory, bureaucracy, and fragility.

• Tomasz Zielinski (2011) — remembered for his monumental ice-sculptures that melted in real time. His Prix-winning piece, Glacier Sonata, lasted just three days in a Hamburg warehouse, but video and audience testimony have granted it near-mythic status.

• Arun Mital (2016) — who combined drone technology with handwoven textiles, orchestrating aerial choreographies that “embroider the sky.” The Gainsborough jury praised his work for “stitching together the ancient and the technological, the domestic and the planetary.”

• Anya Mikhailov (2024) — the most recent laureate, whose kinetic sculptures powered by tidal currents made her a figure of global renown almost overnight. Within months, she was appointed to represent Russia at the Venice Biennale, proving once again the Prix’s catalytic force.

The Prix has never shied away from controversy. It has been criticized for championing works too ephemeral to be preserved, too performative to be commodified, too radical for museum acquisition committees. Yet precisely this resistance to market assimilation has granted the Gainsborough its aura. To win the prize is to enter into a lineage of experimenters whose contributions may resist immediate comprehension but whose echoes shape the art world for decades to come.

That is why the Prix is said to both “make and break careers.” For some, the sudden spotlight has been blinding, and artists have retreated from the glare. For others, like Doodle Pip, the Gainsborough stage provided a platform from which to leap into global visibility.

As the 2025 shortlist suggests — from Dafydda’s contemplative parkour to Marina Okoye’s textile cartographies — the Gainsborough Art Prix continues its restless search for what art might yet become. It is less a prize than a provocation, a demand that we reconsider not only how art is made, but how it reshapes the way we live, breathe, and move through the world.

CALL FOR ARTISTS: Portraits of John Lennon

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CALL FOR ARTISTS: Portraits of John Lennon

The Apothecaries Museum, Camden

The Apothecaries Museum in Camden invites submissions for an extraordinary exhibition exploring one subject in infinite ways: John Lennon. Every piece must be the artist’s personal response to the name, memory, or spirit of John Lennon — whether literal, abstract, digital, conceptual, or performative.

This once-in-a-lifetime exhibition will showcase works by both emerging and established artists. Confirmed participants include:

• Hedge Fund – presenting a digital portrait that reimagines Lennon in unexpected colours

• Daffyda – a living artwork: walking the entire distance from Abbey Road to Liverpool Airport in memory of Lennon.

• Mira Flux – stitching 1,000 tea-stained handkerchiefs into a soft-focus textile portrait.

• Orpheus Bane – building a sculpture from smashed guitars and broken spectacles.

• Céline Noir – layering Lennon’s lyrics into a holographic collage projected onto mist.

• The Camden Choir of Shadows – performing word-free “portraits” of Lennon through breath-work alone.

Submissions are now open for artists worldwide who wish to join this historic exhibition. The selected artists will have their work shown at the Apothecaries Museum, Camden, alongside these luminaries.

The Prize

A distinguished panel of judges, led by Jules Carnaby of Pimlico Wilde and other cultural arbiters, will award one artist the ultimate prize:

• £500,000 in cash

• A bag of oil paint

• A year’s supply of crisps (artist’s preferred flavour) courtesy of Salton Crisps*

Salton Crisps – Available Flavours:

• Rosemary & Sea Salt

• Truffle & Parmesan

• Charcoal Smoked Cheddar

• Lemon & Thyme Roast Chicken

• Beetroot & Black Pepper

• Cider Vinegar & Dill

• Seaweed & Sesame

• Black Garlic & Olive Oil

• Horseradish & Sour Cream

• Jalapeño & Lime

Artists may submit digital files, proposals, or documentation of performance pieces.

For full details and submission guidelines, visit the Gainsborough Art Prix website.

*For health reasons a year’s supply of crisps is limited to two packets per month, or twenty-four per annum.

Doodle Pip wins the Solihull Portrait Prize for Portraiture: A Radical Rethink of Representation

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Doodle Pip Solihull Portrait Prize Winner

In a dramatic and paradigm-shifting moment for the British art world, the 2025 Solihull Portrait Prize for Portraiture has been awarded to the enigmatic and uncompromising artist known only as Doodle Pip. Pip’s winning work — a line drawing that defies conventions of likeness, realism, and even recognisability — has stunned critics and delighted philosophers of art.

The image, a spidery, looping contour of abstract whimsy, bears only the faintest hint of a human face. Some have likened its energy to the automatic drawings of the Surrealists; others to the raw vitality of children’s art. Yet Doodle Pip’s intent is clear and strikingly original. As the artist has put it, “If my picture looks too much like the sitter, I start again. I want to convey nothing of the subject.” This, Pip insists, is portraiture stripped of ego, freed from the tyranny of likeness, and rendered into pure expression.

A New Kind of Portraitist

In a field traditionally governed by fidelity to the subject — from the dark psychological probes of Rembrandt to the cool celebrity gloss of Warhol — Pip’s anti-representational philosophy marks a bold departure. Like Murillo, Pip maintains a connection to human figures, but where Murillo sought beatific realism, Pip seeks only the trace of an encounter, not a depiction.

In this year’s competition, over 300 artists submitted entries — ranging from photorealistic oil panels to preposterous conceptual work, (I’m looking at you, Davos) . Among the shortlisted names were noted figurative painter Helena Voigt, whose brooding chiaroscuro portrait of her grandfather was widely tipped for the win, and textile-based experimentalist Leo Mensah, who stitched the face of his subject into a dense tapestry of mirrored thread.

But it was Pip’s drawing, titled Portrait of Janet, that arrested the judges’ attention.

Judges’ Statement

The judging panel, led by artist and academic Dr. Maureena Hathersley, praised the work as “a radical act of erasure and resistance against the hyper-visibility of the image in contemporary life.” In their joint statement, the panel noted:

“Doodle Pip has not merely disrupted the genre of portraiture; they have redefined it. By deliberately refusing resemblance, Pip forces us to question what — or whom — we are really looking at. The sitter dissolves. In their place, we find the pure gesture of the artist’s hand, an existential doodle that is both intensely personal and entirely anonymous.”

Fellow judge and gallerist Marco Chevalier added, “In an age obsessed with selfies and deepfakes, Pip’s drawing is a kind of visual haiku. It reminds us that a portrait is as much about absence as presence.”

A Cult Figure Emerges

Despite, or perhaps because of, their deliberate avoidance of biography, Doodle Pip has rapidly become a cult figure among young collectors and philosophers. Very little is known about the artist’s background, training, or even their real name. What is certain is that Pip sees the act of drawing not as a craft or a skill, but as an event — a temporal and ephemeral trace of thought, mood, and resistance.

In refusing to ‘capture’ the sitter, Pip liberates the viewer from the obligation to interpret a personality or identity. Their portraits become meditations on the futility of knowing another person, or even oneself.

A Turning Point?

The Solihull Portrait Prize for Portraiture has long been a bellwether for evolving approaches to portraiture, but this year’s decision may prove to be a truly watershed moment. Whether Pip’s work will inspire a new school of de-portraited portraiture remains to be seen, but already murmurs of “doing a Pip” are circulating through art colleges and online forums.

One thing is certain: with one beautiful piece, Doodle Pip has drawn a new boundary in the shifting sands of contemporary art — and, just as quickly, erased it.