Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2025 Call for Entries & Selectors Announced
- Written by Anita Taylor
The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2025 is now open for entries, offering drawing practitioners around the world the opportunity to showcase their work in the UK’s leading open exhibition dedicated to drawing with awards of a total value of £27,000.
Artists and drawing practitioners worldwide are invited to submit up to three drawings for consideration by the distinguished Selection Panel. The annual open exhibition has a longstanding reputation for celebrating excellence in contemporary drawing practice and is led by its founding Director, Professor Anita Taylor.
We are delighted to announce the Selection Panel for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2025:
Fiona Bradley OBE, Director of Fruitmarket
Kieran Long, Director of Amos Rex
Soheila Sokhanvari, Artist
All selected works will be included in a high-profile exhibition that will launch at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London on 9 October 2025 and then tours widely in the UK until July 2026.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication and a programme of educational and engagement activities, including a symposium at Trinity Buoy Wharf.
Drawings shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2025 eligible for the following awards:
First Prize: £8,000
Second Prize: £5,000
Student Award: £2,000
Evelyn Williams Drawing Award: £10,000
The deadline to register for entry for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize is 17 June 2025 at 5pm (BST). Following online registration, all entrants submit their artworks to one of the Collection Centres located across the UK. All works submitted are seen in person by the Selection Panel.
The Entry Portal for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2025 is here.
For press enquiries and images, please contact Marine Costello at Parker Harris by email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
For all other enquiries, please contact the project manager, Parker Harris by email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
L-R: Fiona Bradley OBE, Kieran Long, Soheila Sokhanvari
ABOUT THE TRINITY BUOY WHARF DRAWING PRIZE:
The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize exhibition and awards are supported by the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust, and the annual open exhibition is led by its Director, Professor Anita Taylor, an artist, curator and educator. The Call for Entries is open to all drawing practitioners worldwide and the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2025 exhibition and awards will be selected by the annually appointed selection panel - Fiona Bradley OBE, Kieran Long, Soheila Sokhanvari – who will also select the First Prize of £8,000, a Second Prize of £5,000, and Student Award of £2,000.
The Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust also supports a Working Drawing Award of £2,000 that focuses on drawings for architecture, design and making, and which has a separate selection process and panel. This Call for Entries will be launched separately in later March/early April 2025.
The Evelyn Williams Drawing Award of £10,000 is supported by the Evelyn Williams Trust, and is awarded every other year to an artist with a drawing selected for the exhibition and who has an existing track record. Eligible artists are invited to submit an exhibition proposal based on their particular approach to drawing. The proposals are reviewed by a Trustee, the Director of Drawing Projects UK, and Curator of the host gallery. The award recipient then has the chance to research and deliver a solo exhibition a part of the gallery programme, with the exhibitions of Evelyn Williams Drawing Award-winners to date - Barbara Walker, Penny McCarthy, Roland Hicks, Isabel Rock - held in partnership with Jerwood Gallery/Hastings Contemporary. Isabel Rock’s solo exhibition will be open in October 2025 at Hastings Contemporary.
ABOUT THE TRINITY BUOY WHARF DRAWING PRIZE 2025 SELECTORS
Fiona Bradley OBE: Fiona Bradley’s career – spent entirely in the public sector – is motivated by a commitment to the transformative power of art, and to what bringing artists and audiences together can do. She started her curatorial career at Tate Liverpool and the Hayward Gallery, London, and has been Director of Fruitmarket in Edinburgh since 2003. At Fruitmarket, she has overseen a dramatic rise in audiences and a major expansion and improvement project that doubled the size of the building, improving access and adding new spaces including the inspirational new Warehouse.
Fiona’s programme at Fruitmarket has included exhibitions of work by major Scottish and international artists including Leonor Antunes, Phyllida Barlow, Karla Black, Louise Bourgeois, Martin Boyce, Stan Douglas, Ellen Gallagher, Eva Hesse, William Kentridge, Jim Lambie, Lee Lozano, Ibrahim Mahama, Howardena Pindell, Cai Guo Qiang, Roman Signer and Barry Le Va. She has worked in the public realm, bringing art to audiences where they are with Martin Creed's Work 1059, a work of permanent public sculpture on Edinburgh's historic Scotsman Steps, and Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s Night Walk for Edinburgh, an interactive, site-specific video work for smartphone.
Fiona was a member of the jury for the Turner Prize and the Paul Hamlyn Award in 2007; the Woon Foundation Painting and Sculpture Art Prize in 2015; the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2016; and the Kleinwort Hambros Emerging Artist Prize in 2019 and 2021. In 2011 she was the curator for Scotland’s contribution to the Venice Biennale with Karla Black; and in 2019 was a member of the Selection Committee for the British Pavilion (selecting Cathy Wilkes). She was a member of the Imperial War Museum Contemporary Commissioning Committee between 2015 and 2024. She was awarded an OBE for services to the arts in 2018 and is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Edinburgh and an Honorary Professor in the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester.
Kieran Long: Since February 2024, Kieran Long has been the Director of Amos Rex, a contemporary art museum established in Helsinki that opened in 2018. Kieran was previously Director of ArkDes, the National Centre for Architecture and Design in Stockholm, Sweden (2017-2024), and the Keeper of the department of Design, Architecture and Digital at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He is a non-executive director of V&A Dundee. His career includes roles as a curator, museum director, broadcaster, and teacher. He is an award-winning writer in the fields of art, architecture and design.
Soheila Sokhanvari: Soheila Sokhanvari is a British/Iranian artist, born in Shiraz, whose multimedia work cultivates a non-uniform practice, and her works deal with contemporary political landscapes with a focus on pre-revolutionary Iran 1979. She is drawn to events and traumas that linger in the collective consciousness or cause mass amnesia.
Soheila first graduated in Biochemistry in 1986 and worked as a cytogeneticist from 1987 and as a research scientist for Cambridge University from 1998-2005 when she took a leap of faith to follow her dreams to become an artist. She studied from 2001-05 part time graduating with a degree in Fine Art and Art History from Anglia Ruskin University, followed by a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art & Design in 2006, finally graduating with an MFA Fine Art from Goldsmiths College in 2011. Her solo shows include her (upcoming) retrospective, Museum Frieder Burda, Baden Baden, Germany (2027); Rebel, Rebel, ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark (2024); We Could Be Heroes..., Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge University, (2024); Rebel, Rebel, The Curve, Barbican Centre, London (2022). She is currently in a group exhibition, Pattern: Rhythm and Repetition, Pallant House, Sussex (until 27 April 2025); Contemporary Collecting: David Hockney to Cornelia Parker, British Museum (2024); Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London, UK (2024); Act 3. The Horse and the Power / Hesten og magten, Kunsthal Rønnebæksholm, Næstved, Denmark (2024). Soheila was selected for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2015 (London & touring 2015-16). She was commissioned in 2018 for Victoria Station, London by the Tate Collective and the London Mayor. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and has works included in national and international museums as well as private collections, including LACMA, Los Angeles; The New Art Gallery Walsall; The Government Collection with work currently on show at Number 10 Downing St; British Museum; Fitzwilliam Museum; and The Women’s Art Collection, Cambridge University. Her exhibition Rebel, Rebel was nominated for the 2024 Sky Arts Awards celebrating the best of British and Irish culture.
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The Evelyn Williams Drawings Award assists the recipient in developing a solo show for Hastings Contemporary. The award was selected by David Alston from the Evelyn Williams Trust, Liz Gilmore, Director of Hastings Contemporary, and Anita Taylor, founding Director of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize and Drawing Projects UK and Dean of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design at the University of Dundee. Roland Hicks (b.1967 Aldershot, UK) studied BA Fine Art at Winchester School of Art, 1987-90, MFA Fine Art at Slade School of Art, 1994-96. Selected group exhibitions include: Gradation curated by Paul Carey-Kent at Patrick Heide Gallery, London (2019); Sticky Business at Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam (2018); Humble As Hell (also curating) at the Kurt Schwitters Merzbarn, Elterwater (2017). Selected solo exhibitions include: OSB - Of Spaces Between at Mrs Rick's Cupboard, Primary, Nottingham, (2017); The Gathering Things at Eleven Fine Art, London, (2013); Roland Hicks/Give Me Every Little Thing at Oriel Davies, Newtown, then touring to Ffotogallery Cardiff (2008). Previous prize exhibitions include: Contemporary British Painting Prize (2018); Jerwood Drawing Prize 2015, London & UK tour (2015); John Moores 25, Liverpool (2008). He lives and works in London in the UK. 
