THREADNEEDLE FIGURATIVE PRIZE

• The Prizes
• The Selectors

The Selectors

Richard Cork

Richard Cork is an award-winning art critic, historian, broadcaster and exhibition curator. He studied Art History at Cambridge, where he was awarded a Doctorate in 1978. After beginning his career as Art Critic of the London Evening Standard and Editor of Studio International, he became Art Critic of The Listener, Chief Art Critic of The Times and, more recently, Art Critic of the New Statesman. He now writes for the Financial Times, The Guardian and a wide range of magazines in Britain and abroad.

In 1989-90 he was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge, and from 1992-5 the Henry Moore Senior Fellow at the Courtauld Institute. A frequent contributor to BBC radio and television programmes, he has organised major exhibitions at Tate, the Hayward Gallery, the Royal Academy and elsewhere in Europe. He has acted as a judge for many leading art prizes and commissions, among them the Turner Prize. His books include a ground-breaking study of Vorticism, awarded the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize in 1976; Art Beyond the Gallery, winner of the Banister Fletcher Award in 1985; a major monograph on David Bomberg, 1987; A Bitter Truth: Avant-garde Art and the Great War, winner of a National Art Fund Award in 1995; Jacob Epstein, 1999; and four acclaimed paperbacks of his critical writings on modern art, published by Yale in 2003. His latest book, Michael Craig-Martin, was published by Thames & Hudson to coincide with the artist's 2006 retrospective exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. He has recently completed Mercy, Madness, Pestilence and Death, a major history of western art made for hospitals from the early Renaissance to the twentieth century.

Angela Flowers

Today's renaissance of British contemporary art owes much to those who championed the cause in the Sixties and Seventies, when many ground-breaking artists appeared. Angela Flowers was a leader among the smaller galleries born then. She used her first Soho premises to introduce new, exciting artists - along with senior, established artists who deserved wider appreciation.

Angela became a partisan of new art thanks to visits to St. Ives, where painters like Patrick Heron and Ben Nicholson flourished alongside sculptors including Barbara Hepworth and Denis Mitchell. When a friend suggested she should open a gallery, Angela was quick to seize the opportunity and rapidly won a reputation for taste, courage and integrity. Successful shows, including several debuts, launched or relaunched the careers of Tom Phillips, Derek Hirst, Boyd & Evans, Patrick Hughes and many others.

After its opening in late 1969, the Gallery journeyed around several different premises. The turning point was her path-finding move to the East End. Her enterprise let to additional premises in Cork Street and on Madison Avenue, NY. In 2002, the East End gallery moved premises to Kingsland Road, London, E2.

In 1994, Angela Flowers became a Senior Fellow of Royal Academy of Art and in 1999, an Honorary Doctorate of University of East London.

William Packer

William Packer trained as a painter at Wimbledon School of Art. He was involved in art education over many years, first full-time, then as a part-time art school lecturer, and latterly as a visitor and external examiner. He has served on several advisory bodies, notably the Crafts Council, the Government Art Collection Committee, the Council for National Academic Awards (Fine Art Board), and the Council of the AGBI. He began writing art criticism in the late 1960s and was principal art critic of the Financial Times until 2004, to which he is still a contributor. His books include a biographical study of Henry Moore, and a study of fashion illustration: Fashion Drawing in Vogue. He has also served on many exhibition selection panels, notably the John Moores and, over many years, The Hunting Art Prizes. Among the exhibitions he has curated was the Arts Council's first British Art Show, of which he was the sole selector. In all this time, he has continued as a painter, first exhibiting at the RA in 1963, showing in group exhibitions whenever opportunity allows. In recent years he has also had regular solo shows at the Piers Feetham Gallery. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art, and was recently elected a member of the New English Art Club.

Hew Locke
Photo by Indra Khanna

Hew Locke is a mixed-media sculptor whose work blurs the boundaries between drawing, sculpture and installation. Born in Edinburgh, Hew grew up in Guyana, influencing his style and themes of working. Hew returned to the UK in 1980 and graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Falmouth University in 1988, followed by an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art in 1994.

In 2000 Hew won the Paul Hamlyn Award and the East International Award, bringing wider public attention to his work. Following these awards he had his first solo exhibition at the Chisenhale Gallery, London. Hew has installed works at the V & A Museum, London and on the façade of Tate Britain. He has also shown in group exhibitions Jerwood Sculpture Prize (2003), British Art Show 6 (2005/06), and Alien Nation at the ICA, London (2006).

Recently, Hew participated in Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. His works are included in several prestigious collections such as the Brooklyn Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum drawing collection, the British Museum, the Government Art Collection, the Arts Council Collection and the Henry Moore Institute.

Hew has just completed a solo exhibition at Hales Gallery, London (see Art World, Feb/Mar 2008, p.26). He’s been commissioned to design a permanent artwork for the New Art Exchange in Nottingham and is part of the group show Now Then currently at the Bluecoat Art Centre, Liverpool. He will be in the forthcoming opening show Second Lives of the new Museum of Art and Design, New York.

Brian Sewell

As addicted to art as others are to alcohol and nicotine, Brian Sewell has been the art critic of the London Evening Standard for a quarter of a century, the sad end of a once promising career, his many prizes for criticism and journalism scant consolation to a man who earlier enjoyed life as a scholar gypsy.

The Arts and British Councils, the Royal Academy and the Royal Collection, have all at some time in the past fifty years given him employment, so too have Christie's and (as a teacher) Brixton Prison. As an occasional relief from western art this sometime student at the Courtauld Institute has, in Turkey, spent many months making inventories of early churches in Cappadocia and the old Armenian provinces.

For amusement he writes with equal expertise on what are now regarded as old motor cars, on opera, and on the three rescued dogs who share his life; for mischief he performs with tongue in cheek on radio and television.