The Art Writing Prize 2025
Our judges for the 2025 edition of the Art Writing Prize were writer and Professor Maria Fusco, artist and writer Helen Marten and Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Bengi Ünsal.
Francis Whorrall-Campbell
©Matthieu Croizier, 2024
Francis Whorrall-Campbell was awarded the 2025 Prize for their work entitled THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED
Francis Whorrall-Campbell (b.1995) is an artist, researcher, writer and sometimes art critic from the UK.
In their writing, Francis undertakes a materialist investigation of sexual subjectivity. Guided by research into the pasts and presents of gender transition, a relationship between making an aesthetic object and making a (gendered) self emerges as a method of thinking critically about how identities and desires are formed in interaction with the world and narratives around them.
In their artistic practice, Francis uses sculpture and image-making to approach form as an infrastructure of representation. He has a particular interest in techniques of reproduction (copying, bootlegging, faking, defrauding), the logics of property, and the affects and effects of brutality.
Francis’ work has been included in exhibitions at Kunstraum Lakeside, Klangenfurt; The Ryder Projects, Madrid; CCA, Derry; Project Art Centre, Dublin. In 2025 he was awarded the Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award.
The Art Writing Prize 2024
Our judges for the 2024 inaugural edition of the Art Writing Prize were Artist Jesse Darling, Director of Camden Arts Centre Martin Clark, and Writer Laura Haynes.
Joshua Leon
Joshua Leon was awarded the 2024 Prize for their work entitled The Process
Joshua Leon is an artist and writer. He received his PhD from the Royal College of Art, London, UK in 2023. In his writing and exhibition making Leon employs a theory of collapse within a broader examination of the lament as a critical space; exploring how archival remembrance, historical research and memoir fall into each other. This approach examines the ways in which site, place and material bear witness, codify language and store personal and socio-historical memory. Leon’s work has been exhibited at Chisenhale Gallery, London, CAPC, Bordeaux, Kunstverein München, Munich and the Barbican, London.
Rosie O’Grady
Rosie O’Grady was awarded the 2024 Prize for their work entitled Naming the dog
Rosie O’Grady is a writer and artist based in Glasgow. Her practice manifests in print, photography, video, text and performance. Naming the dog is a memoir in three parts. Structured chronologically over one year, it stays with the theme of different types of survival, taking the question of how to survive directly to the street and spaces of care. The hospital, day centre, protest rally, park, library, funeral and train carriage all become primary sites of meaningful attention and Activity. The final section brings the title into focus, exploring the dog as complex symbol in our collective social imagination. As it gains momentum around speaking up and speaking out, Naming the dog introduces the metaphor of trauma as a puppy, asking how this might integrate with our existing metaphorical constructions concerning dogs – as veiled explanation for things going wrong, or something unspoken. O’Grady’s work has appeared in Fortified Journal, MAP magazine and The Yellow Paper and she has undertaken residencies at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, Hospitalfield, Cove Park and Le Garage.