The curated section of the Threadneedle Prize exhibition features work by six artists working in figurative art: Grant Foster, Georgia Hayes, Chantal Joffe, David Lock, Sarah Lucas, and Laura Oldfield Ford. The curator, Sacha Craddock, selected these artists to demonstrate the evolving nature of figurative art in contemporary practice and the works include paintings, drawings, sculpture, and works incorporating mixed media.

1. THETHREADNEEDLEPRIZE2014FIGURATIVEARTTODAY
THECURATEDSPACE
THE CURATED SPACE

2. FOREWORD
This year the Threadneedle Prize
enters a new era, building on its
success since inception in 2008.
The Prize began as a collaboration
between Threadneedle Investments,
a leading international investment
manager, and Mall Galleries, and it
continues to grow ever stronger.
For the first time this year, the winner
will be awarded a solo show at Mall
Galleries, an incredible opportunity to
showcase work in the heart of London.
Along with a cash award of £20,000,
The Threadneedle Prize remains one
of the most valuable art prizes in the
UK.
Figurative art has always been at
the forefront of our Prize, and we
wanted to evolve that emphasis even
further. Chosen by a selection panel
of industry leaders, we are delighted
that this year’s exhibition features a
broad range of talented emerging and
established artists, working within the
realms of figurative art in the UK and
Europe.
This year sees the inauguration
of a curated section which will
provide a platform to demonstrate
the importance of figurative art in
contemporary practice. In introducing
the ‘Curated Space’, we have sought
to complement and enhance the
already well-established open entry
competition. Our first Guest Curator,
Sacha Craddock, has brought
great insight and personality to the
exhibition. Sacha’s selection brings
together artists and works across a
range of experience, backgrounds
and training, all of which demonstrate
the evolving nature of figurative art in
the wider context of the contemporary
visual art world.
Over the past year, The Threadneedle
Foundation has continued to grow
our commitment to investing in the
community, and our partnership with
Mall Galleries reflects this. Another
example is our partnership with
The Art Room, a national charity
that supports 5-16 year olds who
are experiencing emotional and
behavioural difficulties. Earlier in the
year we worked with The Art Room
and Mall Galleries to present Face
Time, a fundraising exhibition that
brought together over 60 works of art
by leading international artists raising
more than £65,000 for The Art Room.
I would like to thank everyone
involved in The Threadneedle Prize
this year: our panellists, who
dedicated many hours debating the
selection and provided an invigorated
insight into the current figurative
landscape; the artists and their
thousands of entries; Sacha Craddock
and the artists who loaned their work
to the curated section; and finally,
to Mall Galleries. We hope that The
Threadneedle Prize 2014, including
the Curated Space, will provide
you with the perfect opportunity to
experience and discuss Figurative
Art Today.
Campbell Fleming
Chief Executive Officer,
Threadneedle Investments

3. THE SELECTORS
Kevin Francis Gray
Kevin Francis Gray’s work uses the
neoclassical style of sculpture to
produce images of contemporary
urban life. Hoodies and trainers
are carved in marble and bronze.
“His work addresses the complex
relationship between abstraction and
figuration and aims to transcend the
natural and the material in both form
and subject matter, seeking to render
a physical perfection that is
not reached in the temporal world.
This tension between the real and
unreal lends itself to a worthwhile
questioning of contemporary
definitions of tradition and
innovation.” Pace Gallery, London
John Martin
John Martin is Director of John Martin
Gallery, with two gallery spaces in
Central London. He is also Founder
and Director of Art Dubai and Adviser
for International Art Projects. In 2007
he founded the Middle East’s first
contemporary art fair, Art Dubai, for
which he was Fair Director for four
years until 2010.
During this period he initiated the
Global Art Forum, the Abraaj Capital
Art Prize and Contemparabia, a
cultural itinerary aimed at international
museum groups, collectors and the
press.
Whitney Hintz
Whitney Hintz is an independent
advisor and Curator of the Hiscox
Collection. The Hiscox Collection
comprises approximately 600 works
on display across the company’s 30
offices in the UK, Europe and USA.
In addition to overseeing the Hiscox
Collection and advising private
clients, Whitney is a board member
of the Crossrail Arts Programme and
‘Sculpture in the City’, an annual
outdoor public sculpture exhibition
located within the City’s Square Mile.
She is also a consultant for both the
Kenneth Armitage Foundation and
the Eduardo Paolozzi Foundation.
Nancy Durrant
Nancy Durrant is Arts Commissioning
Editor and an Art Critic at The Times,
where she has been for 11 years. She
has appeared as a commentator on
documentaries and Channel 4 News
and has presented several films for
BBC’s The Culture Show.
She has served on the judging panel
of various art prizes, including the
New Sensations Prize at the Saatchi
Gallery, the Converse/Dazed
Emerging Artist Award in association
with the Whitechapel Gallery and the
Zoo Art Fair prize. She spends her
life in museums, art galleries, theatres,
cinemas and on buses.

4. Sue Williams A’Court
Thomas Allen
Claire Rebecca Anscomb
Sarah Ball
Angela Bell
James Bland
Gill Button
Charlie Calder-Potts
Dea Campbell
Nicholas Cheeseman
Paul Dash
Jack Davis
Graham Dean
Judith Dobie
Sam Douglas
Fantich & Young
Kate Giles
Alastair Gordon
Buster Grimes
Raoof Haghighi
Susie Hamilton
Lee Hardman
Niki Hare
Tina Jenkins
Ben Johnson
Michael Johnson
Gareth Kemp
Carol Anderson Knight
Sarah Knill-Jones
Gala Knorr
Ursula Leach
Rose Long
Pablo Garcia Martinez
Alan McGowan
Kim Meredew
Michael Sydney Moore
Morwenna Morrison
Suzy Murphy
Shanti Panchal
Freya Payne
Barbara Polderman
Claire Price
Keith Roberts
Gill Rocca
Erin Sevink-Johnston
Sarah Shaw
Laura Smith
James Tailor
David Teager-Portman
Tomas Tichy
Anika Tunstall
Marijke Vasey
Tom Jean Webb
Paul White
Craig Wylie
EXHIBITING ARTISTS
THE SHORTLISTED WORKS

5. Sue Williams A’Court
Anonymous 2
Graphite and paint on old book cover
30 x 21 cm
£550
Thomas Allen
The Net
Charcoal and sanguine
150 x 240 cm
£2,000

6. Sarah Ball
Skin Painting Quadriptych
Oil
18 x 58 cm
£4,800
Tina Jenkins
Bed Head
Gloss paint and acrylic on plastic sheeting
170 x 170 x 8 cm
£3,950

7. David Teager-Portman
Choosing the Losing Side, The Last Explorer
Bronze, plaster, shellac and pigment
120 x 190 x 150 cm
£3,500
Craig Wylie
EW(hood)
Oil on linen
183 x 134 cm
£25,000

8. Claire Rebecca Anscomb
Encased
Graphite
35 x 28 cm
£500
THE SELECTED WORKS

9. Sarah Ball
Prisoners Diptych
Oil
18 x 29 cm
£2,200
Angela Bell
Frank
Oil on gesso board
18 x 13 cm
£325

10. Angela Bell
Margie and the Melons
Oil on gesso board
15 x 15 cm
£325
James Bland
The Ghost
Oil on canvas
90 x 100 cm
£2,600

11. Gill Button
Beard 12
Oil on board
32 x 26 cm
£400
Gill Button
Ricki
Ink on paper
32 x 26 cm
£390

12. Charlie Calder-Potts
And Through the Silence Beat the Bells
Mixed media on scrap armoured metal from Afghanistan, Helmand Province
23 x 38 cm
£1,800
Charlie Calder-Potts
Come Down and Sit in the Dust
Mixed media on armoured plate from warthog vehicle (Afghanistan)
25 x 20 cm
£1,400

13. Dea Campbell
Leaving the Church
Oil on canvas
120 x 90 cm
£2,200
Nicholas Cheeseman
Material Junctures
Unfired clay and found wood
60 x 20 x 20 cm
£3,000

14. Paul Dash
The Float
Pen and ink
95 x 59 cm
£1,700
Jack Davis
Pendennis Point Through The Rain
Oil and enamel on aluminium
100 x 100 cm
£3,950

15. Graham Dean
Boundary Beach I
Watercolour and mixed media
118 x 134 cm
£12,000
Judith Dobie
Thoughtful Man
Collage and watercolour
34 x 25 cm
£500

16. Sam Douglas
Brigus South
Oil on board
31 x 20 cm
£1,450
Fantich & Young
Apex Predator | Alpha Scent
Glass flask, teeth, human hair, and scent
36 x 20 x 20 cm
£3,000

17. Kate Giles
Back Towards Overy Marshes, Norfolk
Oil on board
17 x 22 cm
£1,900
Kate Giles
Plough I (Towards Scolt Head, Norfolk)
Oil on board
18 x 23 cm
£1,900

18. Alastair Gordon
Sacrament VI
Oil on wood
50 x 40 cm
£490
Alastair Gordon
Vibac: Perimeter / Red, White And Blue
Oil on wood
50 x 40 cm
£490

19. Buster Grimes
Blind & Naked
Acrylic
40 x 30 cm
£875
Raoof Haghighi
Golden Frame
Oil on canvas board
25 x 34 cm
£4,750

20. Susie Hamilton
Morne Diablotin
Oil on canvas
76 x 61 cm
£2,000
Lee Hardman
Figure Baring
Oil on linen
100 x 80 cm
£2,800

21. Lee Hardman
Posed Figure
Oil on linen
120 x 100 cm
£3,200
Niki Hare
Mountain Box Shard
Mixed media on print
25 x 17 cm
£850

22. Ben Johnson
Room of the Revolutionary
Acrylic on linen
150 x 225 cm
£72,000
Michael Johnson
Wild Life
Acrylic on paper
68 x 88 cm
£2,500

23. Gareth Kemp
Tropic of Capricorn
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 40 cm
£750
Carol Anderson Knight
Mirage
Oil on linen
200 x 185 cm
£7,500

24. Sarah Knill-Jones
The Disappearing Woman
Oil on digital print
10 x 15 cm
£375
Gala Knörr
Debaser
Phototransfer and oil on canvas
20 x 30 cm
£400

25. Ursula Leach
Celtic Cross II
Oil on canvas
60 x 80 cm
£1,700
Rose Long
Villa Savoye, Poissy, France
Acrylic on linen
60 x 95 cm
£2,250

26. Pablo Garcia Martinez
Annotation 2
Pen on post-note
7 x 7 cm
£400
Alan McGowan
Alisdair
Bronze (Edition of 5)
43 x 28 x 34 cm
£3,500

27. Kim Meredew
Beckett and Bernini
Marble and granite (chair), slate and limestone
231 x 141 x 60 cm
£24,000
Michael Sydney Moore
Untitled 13
Oil
120 x 90 cm
£4,500

28. Morwenna Morrison
Cultural Interventions I
Oil on canvas
110 x 130 cm
£4,000
Suzy Murphy
The Appearance of Things
Oil on canvas
122 x 153 cm
£10,000

29. Shanti Panchal
The Blade
Watercolour
122 x 97 cm
£15,000
Freya Payne
After the Dressing Up III, 2014
Oil on wood panel
42 x 40 cm
£5,000

30. Barbara Polderman
The Conductor
Mixed media
150 x 140 x 50 cm
£6,000
Claire Price
White Cloth
Ink on paper
57 x 38 cm
£500

31. Keith Roberts
Cauchy Horizon I
Acrylic and mixed media on paper
84 x 59 cm
£1,000
Keith Roberts
Wash Horizon
Acrylic and mixed media on paper
60 x 84 cm
£1,000

32. Gill Rocca
Figment VII
Oil on birch ply
30 x 30 cm
£1,900
Erin Sevink-Johnston
Godzilla Mouse House
Oil and acrylic on board
37 x 30 cm
£500

33. Sarah Shaw
Hearthold
Oil on canvas board
35 x 35 cm
£850
Laura Smith
Glass IV
Oil on linen
28 x 18 cm
£1,000

34. James Tailor
Acrylic Paint on Canvas and Stretcher
Acrylic on canvas and stretcher
227 x 73 x 80 cm
£4,000
Tomas Tichy
Artdirector I
Oil and acrylic on canvas
200 x 150 cm
£8,500

35. Anika Tunstall
When I Grow Up
Oil on canvas
101 x 76 cm
£3,600
Marijke Vasey
Untitled
Oil on board
50 x 40 cm
£1,500

36. Tom Jean Webb
It’s Always Hardest to See Right Before The Moonlight
Drawing on sewn cotton fabric
232 x 148cm
£4,000
Tom Jean Webb
Untitled
Drawing on sewn cotton fabric
195 x 130 cm
£4,000

37. Paul White
Fixtures & Fittings
Oil on canvas
46 x 30 cm
£800

38. THE CURATED SPACE ARTISTS
Grant Foster
Star
Acrylic and oil on gesso panel
Stunted Growth
Collage and oil on canvas
Today it Hurts, Tomorrow it Matters
Oil on gesso panel
Georgia Hayes
Saved By Drowning 3
Oil on canvas
Walking in the Rainforest
Oil on canvas
Chantal Joffe
Esme in the Blue Skirt
Oil on canvas
David Lock
Misfit (Shadow)
Watercolour on paper
Misfit (Slice)
Watercolour on paper
Misfit (Smoke)
Watercolour on paper
Misfit (Unwanted)
Watercolour on paper
Sarah Lucas
Hard Nud
Bronze and concrete (Ed. of 6)
Laura Oldfield Ford
Winstanley Estate 1
Oil on MDF
Winstanley Estate 2
Oil on MDF
Winstanley Estate 3
Oil on MDF
Winstanley Estate 4
Oil on MDF
Daniel Silver
Untitled 2014
Carrara marble
Vicky Wright
Extraction IV
Oil on wooden crate
Pacifist Virgin
Oil on wooden panel

39. rough, representing the same power
as themselves. You know it is a head,
a face of sorts, but again as ever,
work needs to be invested to project
a level of detail onto each surface, as
well as questioning as to what it might
be, and what role it could play.
Chantal Joffe’s paintings cover
a substantial range of invention
and observation. Portraits of real
people, that of her daughter Esme,
for instance, her niece Moll, friends,
more family and famous fashion
models, but Joffe also makes up
mainly lovely women who emerge,
reconvened, tottering, heightened,
perhaps generic, forward out of
studies of collaged elements. When
Chantal Joffe paints, working from
life and, or, image, she draws on a
range of closeness and familiarity with
style to remind of a belief in the
language of political communication.
Vicky Wright, who uses the norm and
expectation of form to bring something
inexact, blurring, almost unsighted,
moves between dimensions with ease,
painting on the crate, for instance,
around on the other side. The paint
seems familiar, a swoosh, a tampered
muted mix, seeps into the rough
two and three-dimensional surface,
and a challenge to concentration
and sharp focus is brought to a
momentary conclusion, within the
understood and expected formula
of the formal portrait. The painting
contains a level of unnerving counter
information. A strong, suited, slightly
demonic business person, perhaps,
holds himself across the back to front
framed surface. Colour is strangely
held back but suddenly a purple will
flash with the focussed brilliance of a
drake’s side feather. A painted eye
mirroring a sudden flash of our own
understanding emerges sharp from the
surface, to look back at us and fix on
the world it surveys as prey.
While Wright and Silver use
the surface to approximate an
understanding of power, about
something altogether different in that
it carries a complete and final sense
of promise with it. The background
of Grant Forster’s painting is not
broken, the scene is set and a cluster
of people squat in a huddle, a face
with many eyes for stars, is not in
any way obviously about challenging
the world we see. Neither portrait
nor icon, the touch is slight and
for the artist it seems to be about
getting as close as possible to the
decorative joy of painting with ease
to fend off seriousness, yet there is a
transgressive quality about it all the
same. The child crouching, a light
touch, in probably a scene that might
have come from a photograph that in
itself would have come from painting.
How dangerous it is; no saints, just
stars, no gods, but kids crouching in
the dust.
apparent ease as the paint is mixed,
or even appears to mix itself directly
on the canvas. Painting here is an
incident that mimics heart pumping
blood through the veins, and this is
where the challenge catches.
For Laura Oldfield Ford the power is
in the narrative as she walks beside
the dual carriageway and under the
pedestrian bridges of a post industrial
age where corporations avoid paying
tax and the ‘job seeker’ is fined for
missing an appointment. She makes
paintings, drawings and magazines
about the psychological fabric of
the British city with its diminishing
public space and cuts in welfare. She
draws in heightened monochrome a
Hogarthian but contemporary progress
through the periphery of the city. Using
an orthodox almost adolescent, as
well as back of exercise book Fanzine
style, she features real people, in
this case a squatter from Ireland,
who moves from room to room in his
home. This fine combination of social
description and comment; an empty
pub, a bridge over the canal, people
on a bench in front of a locked shop
with stained concrete is executed in
a recognizable, almost 19th Century
Chantal Joffe, Esme in the Blue Skirt, Oil on canvas
Laura Oldfield Ford, Winstanley Estate 2, Oil on MDF Vicky Wright, Extraction IV, Oil on wooden crate
Grant Foster, Today it Hurts, Tomorrow it Matters, Oil on gesso

40. direct power of association to bring
forward found, made, free and easy
elements, often using wallpaper
scale print to provide a context. Here
though Lucas’ sculpture refers to what
the figure might look like, as well as
what it may in a more naughty and
basic way produce.
Familiarity of media is still part of
the heartbeat of artistic life. The
relationship to all of the work here
is also graphic, constructed out of
the language of reproduction, sharp
outline, and mass communication.
David Lock makes young men emerge
out of a range of reconvened elements
using paper to bring together, in this
case, in watercolour, elements from
a broken two-dimensional world.
Representing a break in the cut-up
piece of paper allows a Cubistic
reality to permeate the surface of
the canvas or paper. The figure
inhabits a surface the same way
relationship to the image of figures in
the case of Georgia Hayes’ paintings,
is the apparently hasty representation
of the experience of incident,
place, and moment. She explains,
straightforwardly, two paintings:
“Walking in the Rainforest” was after
looking at a tableau of facsimile
humans among stuffed apes in the
Natural History Museum in Brussels,
and “Saved by Drowning 3” is from
the fountain in a square in Ortigia,
Sicily, of the goddess Artemis rescuing
a favourite nymph from the river god
by changing her into water. Looming
up, with all the pictorial quality of the
conversion of Saul. Trying to get it
right, to catch the viable expressive
moment somehow between under
and over painting, Hayes paints the
concert, a horse, a number of small
but powerful objects in a British
Museum exhibition.
The figure reminds, rewinds, the
memory of knowledge. It is assumed,
anyway, that a painting will carry the
structure and promise of space within it.
Sarah Lucas, Hard Nud, Bronze and concrete
the actor inhabits the stage. Such
broken representation brings an
unorthodoxy to bear, a sort of happy
families, or snap, with components
that make the face a series of visual
consequences. Lock paints truthfully
what is myopically untrue. People
have a strange sense, the combination
of upper lip with moustache, unhappy
faint eyes, a sort of Gaydar build up
of possibility and personal detail not
shared, the combination of exciting
possibility and broken experience.
Making a portrait from reality, or from
collage, actuality and approximate
invention, is the act of, on the whole,
making something exist, the hand
is already there. The figure exists in
the unseen just as much as it is here
to tell us something completely other
than itself. The combination of felt,
almost first-hand experience, and the
David Lock, Misfit (Slice), Watercolour on paper
Georgia Hayes, Saved By Drowning 3, Oil on canvas
The figure in Hayes’s paintings might
seem to visit the canvas, to even pass
through, yet the figure has traditionally
been felt to exist within sculpture.
Daniel Silver makes or releases
figures, investing them, reinforced,
value-added, with the metaphorical
weight of the history of the portrait
bust and classical figure. For Silver
the figure is one we project upon. A
talisman that is apparently invisible
in its presumption of a religious,
conceptual and formal role. Empty,
full, pulled out of material or cast solid
still, he makes half god, half human,
presences emerge from within an
expectation of the possible, and the
memory of sculptural history. Faces
in a progressing and diminishing
state of realization, heads sitting on
shoulders and ridges, smooth and
Daniel Silver, Untitled 2014, Carrara marble

41. THE CURATED SPACE
“Each year, the Prize attracts
thousands of visitors to Mall Galleries.
But this year we aim to reach out to an
even wider audience by introducing
a new ‘Curated Space’ within the
exhibition. Here our widely respected
Guest Curator, Sacha Craddock, has
organised a smaller exhibition of
works by eight leading contemporary
artists, each representing a different
approach to figuration. We hope
it will enhance and complete the
exhibition’s comprehensive annual
survey of Figurative Art Today.”
Lewis McNaught
Director, Mall Galleries
Sacha Craddock is a freelance critic
and curator, co-founder of Bloomberg
Space and active Chair of the Board
of New Contemporaries.
After studying painting at St Martins
and then Chelsea School of Art,
she started to write criticism for The
Guardian and then The Times. She
has curated a very large range
of exhibitions including a six-year
programme of contemporary art
for Sadler’s Wells.
The artists chosen to exhibit in The
Curated Space are British artist and
psychogeographer Laura Oldfield
Ford; renowned British figurative
painter Chantal Joffe; London based
sculptor Daniel Silver; painter David
Lock; figurative, expressive painter
Georgia Hayes; sculptor Sarah
Lucas, who will represent the UK at
next year’s Venice Biennale; painter
Grant Foster, and finally painter Vicky
Wright.
The celebrated painter, Bert Irvin,
explained many years ago that as
he knows what an ear looks like he
sees no need to draw one. From
the lyrical, through the mystical, to
the mathematical, abstraction is less
in evidence today. The total artistic
principle and belief has, in part, been
replaced by a quicker set of signals,
and the figure is always there to
represent, time, style and disaster. It is
obvious that we cannot help measure
in terms of ourselves, not just one to
one, our width and breath, but also
our own experience of illustration and
intention, from the comic book to the
painted ceiling. It is never questioned
whether we need the figure as an
image in front of us, staying still or
moving through, or reaching out.
Despite movement through virtual
space and real life, we still recognize
a shift from mindful to mindlessness,
and depend on the knowledge of
our physicality. The body breathes
and sees, while the brain works to
tell us what to see. Figuration is the
equivalent of the sky, sometimes blue,
but always there.
In the late 1940s Prunella Clough
started her artistic career by making
paintings of dockers and lorry drivers,
ALWAYS THERE
The Curated Space is new to The Threadneedle Prize
exhibition and complements the open entry competition.
Sacha Craddock
but soon began to represent, and
use, the objects of everyday life.
With the bright, easy, active gesture
of a handheld windmill with plastic
or paper turned back on itself, for
instance, the whirring of air activated
by the breath of a child, becomes
a stand-in for the body. The work
selected for The Threadneedle Prize
covers a tremendous number of ways
of saying what a figure can mean,
aspire to, or even fail at, and this
small exhibition will run alongside
to represent a thoroughly different
approach because work will be less
dependent on an instant level of
individual association and can have
space.
Sarah Lucas’ ‘Hard Nud’ is one of
a series of complete gestures which
mimic the imagining and making
of physical fact. Solid in role and
emphatic gravity, the piece is invented
yet we recognize it. We are talking
of the surface of the skin, a sexual
feeling, perhaps, where the hand may
follow the surface and not necessarily
see. Certain artists equate the touch
of paint with the edge of the skin, a
skin of depiction in reality, touching
as much as making an outline. Sarah
Lucas has forever played with the