Inaugural Paul Smith’s Foundation And Winsor & Newton Art Prize Spotlights Six Emerging Artists

Artists from Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Paris, New York, and Tokyo are featured in With Artists, a new short film produced by the Paul Smith Foundation and Winsor & Newton. With Artists documents the journey of six artist winners of the inaugural International Art Prize. Launched by Paul Smith’s Foundation in 2024, the International Art Prize was born out of a realisation by the Foundation’s inaugural director–Martha Mosse–that early career artists need peer to peer support and the chance to develop their international network. The film premiered at Selfridges cinema in London and captures the journey of the winning artists as they create work commissioned to exhibit in their local Paul Smith stores in Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Paris, New York, and Tokyo.

The prize winners Shannon Bono, Takura Suzuki, Matthieu Livrieri, Brittni Bell Warshaw, Adam de Boer and Chan Wai Lap each made a new piece of work using Winsor & Newton materials, which was displayed in their local Paul Smith store.

The judges are located in each of the cities where the winning artists are based; Aaina Bhargava, Arts & Culture Editor Tatler Asia (Hong Kong), César García-Alvarez, Founding Executive & Artistic Director of The Mistake Room (Los Angeles), Ekow Eshun, Curator, writer, broadcaster and Chair of the Fourth Plinth (London), Fabien Vallerian, International Director of Arts & Culture at Ruinart (Paris), Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Founder Salon 94 and Salon 94 Design (New York) and Kyoko Hattori, Vice President PACE (Tokyo).

Each of the winning artists received a monetary donation from Paul Smith’s Foundation and up to £1,000 worth of materials of their choosing from Winsor & Newton to make a new piece of work which will be hung for sale in their local Paul Smith store.

Narrated by iconic British fashion designer and art lover Sir Paul Smith, With Artists explores the vital role artists play interpreting the world around us, and the inspiration they find in all corners of the globe. Sir Paul is filmed in his London studio, which is full of books, cycling paraphernalia and masses of art hung on the walls in a Royal Academy of Arts Summer exhibition Salon style.

Sir Paul Smith has championed art and artists for decades. From a 30-yr scholarship with the Royal Academy Schools, to a collection of over 10,000 works of art exhibited in stores worldwide. Originals from artists including Damien Hirst, Lynette Yiadom-Boake and Banksy are showcased alongside works from early career artists in a globally rotating programme of showcases and selling exhibitions. To date, over 120 artists have exhibited their work around the world with Paul Smith, including existing and especially commissioned pieces.

In the film Sir Paul says “I’ve never not been interested in art really. I bought a Hockney print in 1972 instead of paying the gas bill. So I suppose that was an early part of being an art lover really, not having any gas in the winter but having a beautiful pretty tulips piece by Hockney.”

The International Art Prize is one of the first new initiatives conceived by Martha Mosse since joining Paul Smith’s Foundation as its inaugural director in October 2023.

Martha Mosse explained to me the mission of Paul Smith Foundation to create opportunities and support programmes across several disciplines and in the first instance specifically for fashion designers, visual artists and designers. “We launched The Fashion Residency in February 2024 – a pioneering business development programme for fashion designers, delivered in partnership with the Mayor of London, Projekt and supported by British GQ – and The Art Prize in May 2024. The Art Prize is our first international art project, and we’re delighted to have developed it with heritage artist materials brand, Winsor & Newton, who are known for a historic commitment to artists and material innovation.”

Judge Fabien Vallerian says in the film: “The prize has an international scope with six different cities enabling six different artists to be recognised for the work and exhibited, also creates a network. Like a family that’s created just by chance but can become more meaningful.”

Judge Ekow Eshun says in the film “The art world isn’t a fixed proposition. The art world isn’t a singular place. The art world really is made up of individuals, artists, galleries, museums and so on. But really the art world is made up of many many people trying to explore and make sense of the world around them.”

Following the success of the inaugural International Art Prize, which had 2,000 applicants, Paul Smith’s Foundation and Winsor & Newton are gearing up to announce year 2 of the prize in early March, which will invite artists from 6 cities to enter and will include a mentor programme.

Martha Mosse explains how the International Art Prize fulfils the mission of Paul Smith’s Foundation to help emerging artists in all aspects of their career: “The focus of Paul’s Foundation is business and practical skills teaching – VAT, budgets, common legal issues, marketing and more – and our mission is to help creative people develop the professional skills they need to sustain a career for the long term. This prize was designed to: develop the artists professional skills like building networks, exhibition management and production; grow their audience both locally and internationally and align them with local figures of industry whilst also providing an opportunity to freely create.”

International Art Prize Winners

Takura Suzuki

New York based winning artist Takura Suzuki’s work focuses on the relationship between contemporary digital technology and humans and how it shapes today’s society. His still life Oscillation of Petals depicts the tension between the fleeting and the permanent and was inspired by a visit to the National Gallery in London.

Suzuki’s winning artwork Oscillation of Petals was exhibited at Paul Smith Wooster St in NYC, and he will have a solo show at the store to coincide with Frieze New York in May 2025.

Takura Suzuki: “For an emerging artist like myself, this prize has provided me with the opportunity not just to showcase my work, but to connect with so many incredible people in the art world. I know how vital these connections are for my growth and career, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have had this opportunity.”

Shannon Bono

Artist and teacher Shannon Bono works with oils, acrylics and spray paints to explore the Black female perspective. Shannon’s paintings embody an Afrocentrist consciousness, creating layered and figurative compositions that centralise black womanhood as a source of knowledge and understanding. Bono’s winning artwork was created using oil paint, acrylic paint, image transfer and spray paint on canvas. She made the piece whilst contemplating the Bible verse Jermiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you’ declares the lord ‘plans to prosper you, and not harm you, plans give you hope and a future.”

Matthieu Livrieri

Matthieu’s vibrant work in coloured pencil on coloured paper is a piece depicting his Mother’s kitchen in her home in Grenoble. His expressive and stylised visual language is expressed in drawing and painting and captures singular moments of daily life, often through a fragmented perspective and exuberant play of colours.

Brittni Bell Warshaw

Tokyo based Brittni returned to painting after a ten-year hiatus and now works from a small space on her living room, including her young daughter in the work as she paints. Her work explores motherhood, identity and personal evolution and often references her immediate surroundings. The colour palette of this work was drawn heavily from the romantic hues of Renaissance paintings, using acrylic paint and coloured pastels on canvas.

Adam de Boer

Inspired by an afternoon’s walk around Echo Park in East Los Angeles, this work was created using the Batik technique of wax resistant dyeing and like much of Adam’s work, draws on Western painting techniques and Southeast Asian craft. Inspired by the brilliant colour of the lake and crisp reflection of the palms, this piece is created using oil paint on linen.

Chan Wai Lap

Lap’s representation of a Budapest swimming pool is part of a themed series depicting the intricate relationship between the public and private, and between the self and strangers. Created with fine pencil on paper, each tile is reconstructed individually and brought together in an illusion perspective. A late comer to swimming Lap now visits pools to explore the open yet intimate access to local culture and urban psyche.

Paul Smith Space

Paul Smith also spotlights contemporary artists with exhibitions at ‘Paul Smith Space’, a dedicated gallery opened in September 2024 in the lower ground floor of his eponymous Albermarle Street store in London’s Mayfair. A new exhibition curated by Nico Kos in collaboration with Tin Man Art opens today–Valentine’s Day–with the enchanting title Little Lights.

Inspired by the poetry of the late astronomer Rebecca Elson, Little Lights pays homage to the ways in which we protect or restore our imaginative hearts. Curator Nico Kos told me at the private view: “Opening for Valentine’s Day, but before the winter is over, Little Lights is an opportunity to reflect on the regenerative potential of creativity, and how crucial it is to safeguard what we love. Instead of curating a thesis, the works you see here were selected in wonderment, for how they spark feelings of joy, desire or cede to a kind of dream state, not unlike sitting together around a fire, lost in the flickering light.”

This enchanting group show is thoughtfully curated by Kos with paintings, drawings and photographic works displayed amongst the Paul Smith collection on the ground floor of the shop so that the palette of the canvases complements or engages in a conversation with the palette of the Paul Smith clothes and accessories, while the lower ground floor gallery is dedicated to the artworks.

Emma Levine’s ethereal photographs ‘Dawn to Dusk’ capture three kinds of twilight, Houda Terjuman’s ‘Blowing the wings of destiny’ is inspired by the flickering of candlelight lifting the wings of a dove, while Catherine Anholt’s Heart with Nature’ and Chloe S Moncrieff’s canvases are inspired by the beauty of nature and fragility of ecosystems. Marie Elizabeth Merlin’s large-scale canvases using an impressionistic palette are objects of beauty, and her reimagining of Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe is a highlight of the exhibition.

‘Little Lights’ is at Paul Smith Space in Mayfair until 20^th April, 2025.