Sussex businesses supporting Sussex artists

October saw the return of The Sussex Contemporary at Brighton i360 for its second year.

Each year the exhibition celebrates the very best work from artists that were either born in Sussex, educated here or currently live in the county.

This year’s theme was ‘Metamorphosis’ and over 1,100 artworks were submitted for consideration by the judging panel who had the difficult task of selecting the 140 artworks for the exhibition. In addition, they also had to choose which artworks received the coveted prizes.

The first of these was The Creative Pod Prize worth over £2,000 which went to Thomas Treherne for his oil painting ‘Rising Sun’. He studied at The Royal Drawing School and The Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University.

The judges felt that ‘Rising Sun’ was a beautiful observation that showed a deep understanding of a natural environment and the cycles within it that had been delicately committed to paper.

The second award was The Preston Insurance Brokers Prize worth over £1,000. It went to Ben Wade for his charcoal drawing titled ‘The Casual Crowd’. This is the first time Ben had worked with charcoal and from a distance it could easily be mistaken for a photograph.

The judges commented that Ben’s work showed an unbelievable skill with the material, and a deep understanding of tone and perspective.

The final prize awarded was The Sussex Contemporary Photography Prize which went to Jonathan Lamb for his moving black and white photo entitled ‘Mum with Dad with Dementia’. The picture sparked many discussions amongst the thousands of visitors to the exhibition. Jonathan generously donated his prize money to Dementia UK.

At the time of writing there is still one prize to be announced which is the People’s Choice Prize kindly sponsored by Whitespace. Visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to vote for their favourite artwork.

“Sussex has been a haven for creative talent for hundreds of years and we wanted to showcase the very best local talent in a standard of exhibition that is usually reserved for world famous artworks,” said Joanna Myles, Creative Director at Sussex Contemporary. “This comes at a tremendous cost, and we are so thankful for our generous corporate sponsors from the Sussex business community.”

Sponsors included; Brighton i360, Mayo Wynne Baxter, Platinum Media Group, Creative Pod, Preston Insurance Brokers, Sussex Print Management, Whitespace and Generation Distillers.

A percentage of the proceeds from artwork sold at the exhibition also went to support Sussex charity Table Talk Foundation.