Since 2021, Stewarts has sponsored a prize for a graduate of the Royal Academy Schools programme, supporting their artistic endeavours following graduation of the RA Schools postgraduate course.
We are pleased to announce that the 2026 Stewarts Prize has been awarded to Maya Gurung-Russell Campbell.
Maya’s work is currently on display alongside the full 2026 graduating cohort at the RA Schools Show, running 12 June – 28 June 2026.
This year’s winner
In 2023, Maya became the second recipient of the Stewarts’ Scholarship Grant and Bursary. She previously completed a BA (Hons) Photography at London College of Communication and was selected for Bloomberg’s New Contemporaries. Her first solo exhibitions, Folklore Imaginary, took place at 87 Gallery in 2022, and she is also an Artiq selected artist.
For her RA Schools degree show, Maya has invited her grandmother to exhibit alongside her. Her latest work is an ever-growing installation of knotted jute rope, the shape of which is dictated not by aesthetic choices but by the knotting process itself. The installation is titled Splinter, a word she associates with memory.
Maya adds:
“The first house that I lived in, which was with my mum in Brixton, before I went into my grandmother’s care, we had wooden floorboards and I would often get splinters.
“There’s something about that, in language, that I really like, and in sculpture too, in relation to tactile memory and sensory perception.”
Nestled within this knotted structure are two of her grandmother’s watercolour paintings, which were made in the 1980s.
The Stewarts Foundation and Royal Academy Schools
In tandem with our support for the RA Schools Show, the Stewarts Foundation provides financial support for one student at a time throughout their three-year course via the Stewarts Scholarship Bursary. Though enrolment at RA Schools is free, additional sponsorship ensures that all places are offered on the sole basis of creative potential and artistic merit and provides the chosen student with bursary funding to enable greater freedom to explore their creativity without material constraints.
Maya comments:
“The bursary from Stewarts has given me the opportunity to experiment more as an artist, trial new materials, and given me the freedom to make mistakes. This has ultimately helped me grow as an artist.”
About the Royal Academy Schools
In 1768 the Royal Academy of Arts was founded to promote ‘the Arts of Design’. A key principle was the creation of the Royal Academy Schools in early 1769, a school of art established to set the standard for the training and professionalism of the next generation of artists. Today the Royal Academy Schools is an independent school of contemporary art that offers up to 17 artists each year the opportunity to participate in a free, three-year, postgraduate programme. The RA Schools remain free and independent to this day so that places are still given to artists based on merit. Its independence enables the postgraduate programme to constantly adapt to the individual needs of each student. Discussion and debate is fuelled by a variety of lectures, artist talks, group critiques and tutorials given by leading contemporary artists, Royal Academicians, critics, writers and theorists.
The RA Schools is led by Cathie Pilkington RA, Keeper of the Royal Academy, and Eliza Bonham Carter, Curator & Director. Recent graduates of the RA Schools include Michael Armitage RA, Sung Tieu, Rachel Jones, Adham Faramawy, Rebecca Ackroyd, Jala Wahid, Roland Carline, Mary Ramsden, Prem Sahib, Lewis Hammond, Hannah Perry, Peter Linde Busk, Jenkin van Zyl, Kobby Adi and Turner Prize nominated Kira Freije, Tanoa Sasraku, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Pio Abad. For more information visit: roy.ac/raschools.