REUBEN MURRAY’S ADA PORTRAIT IS AWARDED THE CASS ART PRIZE
MORE THAN 120 YEARS OF SUPPORTING ARTISTS
Rising British artist Reuben Murray has won the first ever Cass Art Prize 2024. The Prize has been created by leading art supply retailer Cass Art, continuing the Cass family’s monumental legacy of supporting artists for over 120 years.
From art inspired by refugee camps and made in mental health units to National Portrait Gallery Portrait Award 2024 nominees – The Cass Art Prize’s 2024 shortlist was a celebration of British art’s diversity, resilience and impact. Work by the nominated artists, from across the length and breadth of the UK and Republic of Ireland, has been exhibited this month in a prestigious exhibition at Copeland Gallery, London.
(Left) The Students Award winner Lexia Hachtmann,
(Right) Mark Cass and Reuben Murray with Ada, Murray’s winning portrait
Photos: Dave Benett/Getty Images
The awards were presented at a prize giving ceremony hosted by Cass Art Founder Mark Cass at Copeland Gallery on 14 November.
Reuben Murray won The Main Prize, being awarded a £10,000 cash prize and a stand at Saatchi Art’s The Other Art Fair 2025. Inspired by Ben Enwonwu’s African Mona Lisa, Murray’s winning piece Ada proudly portraits Ada, an extraordinary Jamaican Maroon with a Nigerian Yoruba name. Telling the story of African slaves who freed themselves to establish communities of free black people in Jamaica, the moving portrait symbolises strength, struggle and heritage.
Murray is a black working-class neuro-divergent artist from London, exploring themes of representation, race, and history through painting, drawing, photography, and collage. Murray’s work addresses ethical and social questions of humanity in the 21st century, offering a reflective space for people of colour.
The Cass Group Staff Award was won by Yuhong Wang, a category celebrating the staff who power Cass Art’s beloved art shops. Yuhong explores image multiplicity and the limitations of space and architecture through her work. She recently participated in the Turps Banana Off-Site Painting Programme and is currently studying at the Royal Academy Schools. Created quickly in one sitting, her winning work ‘Shirine’s Studio Painting at Shirine’s Studio Space’, functions as both a painting and space divider, exploring the relationship between space, flatness, and spontaneous artistic expression.
The Art Educators Award was won by Giuseppe Iozzi, a painter based in Brighton where he teaches art in a secondary school, who explores the concept of time in his work. Created during evenings and weekends, Iozzi’s paintings reflect on the transient nature of a school environment, capturing empty spaces and ghostly traces of students.
(Left) Liquitex Award for Acrylic winner KV Duong, (Right) The Art Educators Award winner Giuseppe Iozzi.
Photos: Dave Benett/Getty Images
German-British figurative painter Lexia Hachtmann, who recently completed her Masters at the Slade School of Art, won The Students Award. Her monumental image ‘Early Hours’ depicts wilted and living flowers in a vase referencing the Vanitas still life, reflecting contemporary feelings of despair and hope in a poignant dialogue about life and mortality.
Morag Caister was awarded the Michael Harding Award for Oil Painting for ‘Jonathan and Athena’, part of her ‘Sofa Series’ focusing on portraits set in domestic spaces with the sofa as the central element. After a National Portrait Gallery Portrait Award 2024 nomination, winning Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, and making the Forbes 30 under 30: Art & Culture list and the Evening Standard’s London Art Power List, in the space of just a few years Caister has become one of her generation’s most promising new artists.
The Special Judge’s Award, presented by Pippy Houldsworth went to Terence Wilde. The artist’s clay ‘Pagoda’ represents a sacred space for safety and calmness, featuring decorative black and white patterns and airholes for enhanced tranquillity, resembling a personal folly. ‘Pagoda’ will now be shown in ‘The Box’ at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery. Terence Wilde’s work tells a story of the incredible impact art can have in the everyday lives of communities across the UK.
Terence retrained as an artist through Croydon voluntary mental health services. Terence still creates work in a hospital setting today, helping others to express themselves. Terence draws on his own mental health journey and experiences as an adult survivor in his all black and white works, exhibited at the likes of the Royal Academy.
The Contemporary Art Academy Development Award was presented by Zavier Ellis to Catriona Robinson. A 2019 Royal College of Art MA Sculpture graduate, Catriona’s worm-like creatures digest synthetic materials, reshaping cities as future geological imprints in a post-human future. Her work examines the interplay between nature, architecture and deep time, imagining a re-wilding of the city.
Richard Elliott won the Winsor & Newton Award for Watercolour for his painting of Berlin’s Bundestag Library, KV Duong, a Vietnamese artist with a transnational background, won the Liquitex Award for Acrylic for ‘Family Portrait’, a work exploring identity, materiality, and ancestral history. Ellie Cottrell won the Caran d’Ache Award for Drawing & Sketching for ‘How to Eat the Sun’ and Sean Powers took home the Canson Award for Mixed Media & Printmaking for his piece ‘You Could Smell How Quiet It Was’. Swedish sculptor Erika Trotzig won the DAS Award for 3D artwork for ‘Untitled (Stairs)’, a staircase that does not connect, leading nowhere; a fragile, precarious construction, teetering on collapse. It uses the possibility of failure to gently question our relentless pursuit of progress.
The winner of the People’s Choice Award, voted on by Cass Art Prize exhibition visitors, will be announced on 25 November.
Cass Art and the Cass family have been supporting artists for more than 120 years – from championing the works of Monet and Van Gogh in 1890s Europe to facilitating the first three commissions on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. The Cass Art Prize continues this pioneering spirit.
The Cass Art Prize 2024 was judged by an expert panel, after an Open Call held earlier this year.
Judges this year included Curtis Holder, a figurative British artist and previous winner of Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, acclaimed painter and previous winner of the National Portrait Gallery’s BP Portrait Award Justin Mortimer, curator and judge on Sky Arts’ popular Artist of the Year series Kathleen Soriano, gallery owner Pippy Houldsworth, Partner at Carl Freedman Gallery and Counter Editions and TalkArt co-host Robert Diament, founder of Saatchi Art’s The Other Art Fair Ryan Stanier and acclaimed artist Sinta Tantra.
Mark Cass, CEO & Founder of Cass Art said, “I would like to thank all our Artists, Judges & Partners for their support bringing this wonderful exhibition to life. I hope visitors have enjoyed what we hope to be the first of many years of this special event, and hopefully be inspired to take part in The Cass Art Prize in the future. The Cass Art Prize is generously supported by my father’s Estate, and its inaugural exhibition marks what would have been his 100th birthday. 2024 is also a very special year for us, as we celebrate 40 Years since I first started Cass Art, so it seems fitting to take this opportunity to bring together & celebrate just some of the amazing artistic talent we have across the UK & Ireland.”
The Cass Art Prize took place on what would have been Wilfred Cass’s 100th birthday and is generously supported by Wilfred’s estate. This family tradition of entrepreneurship and close relationships with the art world continued through the generations as Wilfred Cass, Mark’s father, later ran Reeves, the world’s oldest paint manufacturer. In addition, Wilfred launched the Cass Sculpture Foundation, a British charity that commissioned more than 450 sculptures from emerging artists over 25 years as well as enabling the first three commissions on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.
“Let’s fill this town with artists” – Cass Art
The Cass Art Prize 2024 exhibition at Copeland Gallery, London Photo: Dave Benett/Getty Images
The Cass Art Prize 2024 winners list
The Main Prize – Reuben Murray
The Students Award – Lexia Hachtmann
The Art Educators Award – Giuseppe Iozzi
Contemporary Art Academy Development Award – Catriona Robertson
Special Judge’s Award, presented by Pippy Houldsworth – Terence Wilde
Michael Harding Award for Oil Painting – Morag Caister
Winsor & Newton Award for Watercolour – Richard Elliot
Liquitex Award for Acrylic – KV Duong
Caran d’Ache Award for Drawing & Sketching – Ellie Cottrell
DAS Award for 3D artwork – Erika Trotzig
Canson Award for Mixed Media & Printmaking – Sean Powers
Cass Group Staff Award – Yuhong Wang
