We are pleased to announce the winner of the Stewarts Prize from the RA Schools Show 2023 ahead of the exhibition opening to the public on Thursday 8 June.
As part of our partnership with the RA Schools, a selection committee made up of staff visited the Royal Academy of Arts on Tuesday 6 June before the exhibition was opened to the public, to view the artists’ works and select a winner of the annual Stewarts Prize.
The Stewarts Prize is awarded each year to one student exhibiting at the RA Schools Show. The winner will receive prize money to help establish their career after three years of study on the RA Schools programme.
Stuart Dench, Managing Partner commented:
“We are delighted to announce Max Boyla as the winner of the Stewarts Prize 2023. Max’s work inspired by the cosmos impressed the group in many ways. The dream-like qualities of the canvases, aligned with the ceramic sculptures and use of neon lights in the installation created a rounded experience that really excited the group.
“The work of all 14 artists was really impressive and the range of techniques and styles made the decision incredibly difficult.
“Thank you to everyone in the selection group who took the time to consider the artists’ work and contribute to such an insightful discussion that led us to choose Max as our winner.”
About the artist
Max Boyla (b. 1991, Musselburgh, Scotland) previously studied at Gray’s School of Art. Across a cosmos of personal and cultural hauntings, Max Boyla creates space for the viewer to consider the role of the artist, the malleability of symbols, and the dimensional limitations of perception. Through the reappropriation of images used to communicate romantic mythologies of masculinity, consumerism, and the art world, the artist excavates the meaning which sediments in the afterlife of such imagery. Over interconnected bodies of work, Boyla calls upon these ghosts to confront his own subjectivity as an artist, and the toxicities that linger. In a gesture of both existential melancholy and hope, Boyla invites us to reflect on the contradictory interplay of meaning and perception that constitutes this seemingly ready-made world
About RA Schools Show 2023
The RA Schools Show 2023 is the culmination of the free postgraduate programme offered by the Royal Academy. This year, 14 artists will exhibit work covering a range of disciplines including painting, print, performance art, sculpture and moving image.
The RA Schools has been integral to the Royal Academy since its foundation in 1769 and offers a full-time programme to a number of artists each year. It is completely free to those students selected.
For more information about Stewarts’ partnership with RA Schools, please click here.
RA Schools Show 2023, 8 – 25 June 2023, RA Schools Studios and display spaces around the RA. More information can be found here.
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