The Freelands Foundation was set up in 2015 to give more people the chance to engage with visual arts in the UK, and to increase access to art education in the belief that it transforms people’s lives. They also run the Freelands Painting Prize.
For the second year in a row, a Middlesex student has been selected as a winner. This year’s winner is Fa Razavi, and we can’t wait to see her work on display among the other winners in a few months time. In 2021, the Middlesex Fine Art winner was Sunim Rai, with their work ‘The Mover’s Boxes’.
The Foundation launched the Freelands Painting Prize in 2020 to celebrate outstanding painting practice at undergraduate level. The Foundation involves around 40 higher education institutions in the UK that offer BA Fine Art or Painting courses, and invites them to nominate a student to submit an artwork. This artwork must be a painting or a work exploring painting in the expanded field. The judging panel then selects ten winners who take part in an exhibition at their gallery in autumn.
Jury member Simeon Barclay says “Painting is having a great resurgence at the moment, to be part of this year’s jury panel is exciting and offers me the opportunity to have a greater understanding of the medium’s emerging innovators from across the UK.”
By Georgia Clemson