Artist of the Month June 2025: Lisa Ivory, selected and interviewed by Paul Newman for CBP. Lisa Ivory’s landscapes are commonly occupied by a Wildman, who occasionally interacts with a female human figure. There is a Rake’s Progress of sorts, with a skeletal Death figure interrupting the discourse between these characters. The Beast attempts sympathetic magic by scrawling…
Artist of the Month April 2025: Geraint Evans, selected and interviewed by Paul Newman for CBP. Geraint Evans is interested in the ways in which we perceive, encounter and experience the natural world and read it as landscape. His figurative paintings and drawings explore the notion that landscape is largely a social and cultural construct, responding to the…
The Contemporary British Painting Prize goes biennial! The Contemporary British Painting Prize has grown beyond recognition over the years. We started with 300 submissions in 2016, and in 2024 we had an unbelievable 1200+ entries. The first exhibition was just 12 paintings in a small town hall gallery in London, the last exhibition of 51…
Neverends: Judith Tucker’s Fitties – exhibition and talk event transcriptions Neverends: Judith Tucker’s Fitties In June-July 2024 the library in Cleethorpes hosted an exhibition of a small selection of Judith Tucker’s Fitties paintings. During the exhibition some of Judith’s friends and colleagues came together to talk about Judith and her work.
Artist of the Month March 2025: Barbara Howey, selected and interviewed by Paul Newman for CBP. “My current body of work is paintings based on plants. Part of my process is photographing the species of plants seen on my daily walks, not rare but local, some native and some finding a space to grow where seeds have blown…
APT GalleryHarold Wharf, 6 Creekside, Deptford, London SE8 4SA27 March – 13 April, Thurs – Sun, noon-5pm, Free Entry An exhibition of painting, installation, film and performance that takes the simple idea of light emanating from darkness as a starting point to explore deeper themes of the unseen, the psyche, memory, otherness, loss, love, and…
by Louisa Buck This essay about the work of Daniel H Bell, winner of the CBP Prize 2024, was published in the CBP Prize 2024 exhibition catalogue. The essay forms part of the prize. ‘Every normal human being (and not merely the ‘artist’) has an inexhaustible store of buried images in his subconscious, it is merely…
Artist of the Month February 2025: Roland Hicks, selected and interviewed by Paul Newman for CBP. Roland Hicks makes paradoxical paintings and objects that look like minimal abstract assemblages – apparently slightly crudely stapled together from offcuts of various types of chipboard. Sometimes these pieces also create a simple illusion of a three dimensional geometric solid, or of…
Artist of the Month December 2024: Marguerite Horner, selected and interviewed by Paul Newman for CBP. “Marguerite’s paintings lift the ordinary into the extraordinary, and the specific into the universal…they are about the seen and the unseen, the life behind the eye as well as the world in front of it” – Lady Marina Vaizey CBE, formerly the…
An essay by Beth Hughes (independent Curator and Researcher) about the work of Rich Jellyman the winner of the CBP Prize 2023. This essay was published in the CBP Prize 2023 exhibition catalogue. The essay forms part of the prize. ‘Human creativity is a process of variation and recombination’ Susan J. Blackmore, The Meme Machine (1)…
Artist of the Month November 2024: Rich Jellyman, selected and interviewed by Paul Newman for CBP. Rich Jellyman makes paintings that reference internet culture and incorporate technology in the selection of subject matter. Utilising images that display a certain kind of internet sensibility – disposable phone photos, surreal mashups taken from Reddit threads, bad photoshop, memes, AI and…
Keith Ashcroft I’m interested in the stubbornness of paintings and their difficult, unreliable nature as flat, illusory surfaces, and how this fundamental contradiction is negotiated through the complex exchanges between image and material. The process of making is often initiated by staining the canvas surface, which encourages amorphous shapes and forms to emerge and materialise….
Daniel H Bell Daniel H Bell’s paintings are based on the physicality of humans and other animals. The ambiguous figures that appear in them stem from various personal encounters at home and out in nature. The predominantly small-sized pieces revolve around a cast of hybrid creatures, rotting surfaces and miscellaneous body parts. Bell works intuitively,…
Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024 Artist Daniel H Bell is the prizewinner of the 2024 CBP Prize, receiving £8000, an essay written about his painting practice by Louisa Buck (writer and broadcaster), membership to Contemporary British Painting and to be one of the selectors for the 2024 CBP Prize. Olivia Sterling was awarded the ‘Highly…
Artist of the Month October 2024: Kirsty Harris, selected and interviewed by Paul Newman for CBP. Kirsty Harris depicts the most iconic man-made event that might take place in a landscape: the detonation of the atom bomb. Often working at scale, Harris confronts her audience with a vision of awe and beauty. Mushroom clouds hang over desolate expanses…
Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024 Catalogue Winner’s Edition The Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024 catalogue (second edition) features the work of the 17 finalists and includes an introduction by Molly Thompson, an essay by Louisa Buck on this year’s prizewinner, Daniel H Bell, and texts on the Blyth Gallery Exhibition Award and the Judith Tucker…
Surface Tension at Plough ArtsCultural Landscapes at Studio KIND Slow painting The summer of 2024 saw SLOW PAINTING, a dual-sited exhibition hosted by The Plough Arts Centre and Studio KIND featuring works by Contemporary British Painting members and guests. Peter Stiles writes about how the exhibition was first discussed between him and former Contemporary British…
Artist of the Month September 2024: Abigail Hampsey, selected and interviewed by Paul Newman for CBP. Abigail Hampsey’s practice is interested in the overall exploration of landscape. Landscapes of the mind, of narrative and of the world around her. Now once again living in the landscape of her youth, the artist is for the first time painting these…
The Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024 Exhibitions We are pleased to announce the opening of the first CBP Prize 2024 exhibition in Cardiff with the prize giving on Saturday 14 September. The artists: Simon Averill, Ruth Bateman, Daniel H Bell, Eric Butcher, Alison Critchlow, Zavier Ellis, Lothar Götz, Andy Harper, Davina Jackson, Angela Lizon, Lily…
Artist of the Month August 2024: Claudia Böse, selected and interviewed by Paul Newman for CBP. Claudia is drawn to regions which are borderlands, geographically and psychologically and have been rendered throughout history by artists. Her work is process driven and deeply shaped by its relationship to daily life, a passion for history and art made by women. Claudia…
Congratulations to the shortlisted artists We are thrilled to announce the artists for the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024. The 17 shortlisted artists are: Simon Averill | Ruth Bateman | Daniel H Bell | Eric Butcher | Alison Critchlow | Zavier Ellis | | Lothar Götz | Andy Harper | Davina Jackson | Angela Lizon…