Seeing the Unseen, Hearing the Unspoken: Enter Here!

The John Ruskin Prize is a multidisciplinary art prize open to all artists, designers and makers, of all nationalities, aged 18 and over.

For The 6th John Ruskin Prize, there are a few new additions. For the first time you can submit from anywhere in the world. The prize is now open to digital submissions to facilitate international entries. There are also two new prizes - The International Prize and The 2024 Kate Mason Prize for Innovation.

About The 6th John Ruskin Prize

The John Ruskin Prize aims to attract entries from a wide range of artists and makers. Work can be in the following artforms, however this is not an exhaustive list.

Animation

Ceramics 

Collage, in all materials including photography

Combined work using both traditional media and digital elements

Digital artworks

Drawings, in all formats

Film / Video

Glasswork in all forms, such as stained glass or engraved glass

Installation

Metalwork, including gold and silversmithing and heavy metalwork

If you have any questions on whether your artform is appropriate, please get in touch.

Prize Tiers

The prize tiers for The 6th John Ruskin Prize are:

1st Prize, £3000 (Made possible by support from John Ruskin’s charity, the Guild of St George)

Entry is eligible for all artists, designers and makers.

2nd Prize, £2000 (Made possible by support from John Ruskin’s charity, the Guild of St George)

Entry is eligible for all artists, designers and makers.

The 1st Prize and 2nd Prizes are kindly supported by the Guild of St George. The Guild of St George inaugurated the first John Ruskin Prize in 2012 and has supported its development and evolution ever since. This prize aims to reflect a central thread of John Ruskin’s thought: that art has the power to reveal and celebrate universal truths, and that a good artist and maker in any medium should always be guided by that search.

The Alan Davidson Under 26 Prize, £1000

Entry is eligible for all artists, designers and makers aged under 26. This prize is kindly sponsored by The Alan Davidson Foundation.

the International Prize, £1000

Entry is eligible for all artists, designers and makers working outside of the UK. You can work in any medium, but submissions must be digital in format as work will be viewed, judged and exhibited digitally.

The 2024 Kate Mason Prize for Innovation, £1000

This prize celebrates innovation and creativity for all artists, designers and makers working in any materials, at any point in their creative development, whether beginning their creative journey or returning to their practice.

The Kate Mason Prize honours the dedication, advocacy and support Kate Mason has given to the visual arts over her career. This prize recognises her hard work and dedication as Director of The Big Draw and her championing of the John Ruskin Prize for nine and a half years, and her continued endeavours as Chair of the Society of Designer Craftsmen Est.1887, and Companion at The Guild of St George.

INTRODUCTION TO THE THEME:

There is a vast sliding scale of open interpretation to this theme. Seeing the Unseen, Hearing the Unspoken gives a platform for the unseen to be seen and the unspoken to be heard. Work submitted to The John Ruskin Prize needs to engage with and consider this theme.

The last John Ruskin Prize took place in 2019.  During the intervening years, globally, we have experienced unprecedented times with the Covid pandemic, loss, restrictions on our liberty and the cost-of-living crisis.

There's a beautiful practice in Japan called Kintsugi, where broken ceramic is repaired with precious metal like gold or lacquer, creating a beautiful, unique piece. The idea behind it is that the breakage and repair are part of the history of the object, so rather than trying to disguise the damage it is integrated into the fabric, transforming it and giving it a new lease of life. We see the marks but perceive them as now being part of the beauty of the object.

The last few years of our Covid journey has been like the art of Kintsugi, where we all have been a bit broken by it, bearing scars to varying degree. And just like Kintsugi, we are rebuilding our lives in the full knowledge that these unprecedented times are part of our history.

The theme Seeing the Unseen, Hearing the Unspoken can be explored and interpreted in many different ways. What happens when we look beyond what we initially see, beyond the obvious, beyond what we are being told to look at, when we peel back the layers or change the lens or position through which we see the world? What happens when we listen to the silences instead of the noise, picking up on what has not been said, the metacommunication? What does it reveal? 

POTENTIAL INSPIRATIONS:

NATURE

Looking at the vastness of a landscape, what is revealed about it when you turn over a stone and observe the microcosm of life beneath, or look more closely at the lichen on the stone?  When you look underneath the surface of stormy sea, what is revealed? When you view the white chalk earth from an elevated position, what symbol does it reveal and why?  What does the night sky with the myriad of stars reveal about our past?  What messages is nature trying to convey to us through the step change in seasons, about issues such as climate change?

BIOLOGY

What mysteries are contained within our bodies? How can we capture thoughts or the unseen life-giving force, our breath? There is the beautiful sculpture called Breathe 5 by Giuseppe Penone, where he has captured the breath as if it is being exhaled down the length of the body, making the breath visible, captured in clay and the body invisible, evidenced by an imprint pressed into the soft clay.

HUMAN INTERACTIONS

Our senses are bombarded with stimulus from screens, news, social media, influencers telling us what to think, feel, look like. The subtle manipulation from algorithms and data-harvesting scandals like Cambridge Analytica. What are we not being told – what are we not seeing, what are we not hearing?  How does it make us really feel? How does the way we want to be seen differ from reality? Is what we personally project on the world really how we feel or think or perceive ourselves? In our daily interactions with people in the world, we never know what is going on in people’s lives, beyond the image they want to project. 

POLITICAL

In a political arena – what lies beyond the suits and the polished rhetoric?  The cloak and mirrors of orchestrated distractions, diverting people’s gaze from reality so they no longer see or hear the truth.  What lies beneath peddled propaganda?

PLAIN SIGHT

The phenomenon plain sight, where people do not see or hear something because it is too blatant? For example, from street level, people rarely notice rooftops and how their different architectural design tells the story of the historic expansion of a town, because the roofs are above eye level. Secrets are hidden in plain sight in a building, such as an old Town Hall in the South Wales valleys, built on masonic systems and symbols, where four golden angels placed above eye level and a fiery dragon underfoot, go unnoticed by those passing by for nearly thirty years. Another example is with the use of encoding in plain sight, used by Leonardo Da Vinci in his paintings, such as the use of bread to depict a score in ‘The Last Supper’.

COVID

The recent experience of Covid - a virus undetectable with the human eye, that caused so much devastation. It was the bringer of huge changes, and in some cases painful loss, where people who lost their lives to it went unseen and their final words unheard by their loved ones.