Artist Studio Award

The JM Finn Artist Studio Award

Every year, we give one graduate artist £5,000 towards their first studio.

It's called the JM Finn Graduate Artist Award, run with our sponsor JM Finn. A panel from JM Finn and the fair choose the winner from that year's graduate showcase. Past winners: Aisha Seriki in 2023, a fine art photographer from the Royal College of Art. Ross Head in 2024, from the Slade, known for his textured abstract paintings. Hattie Quigley in 2025, from Edinburgh College of Art, working in large-scale oil.

Here's how it started.

I asked my hundreds of artists from my network what they pay for a studio. The answer, on average, came back at around £5,000 a year in London. That's the number the award is built on.

The biggest hurdle for a graduate isn't talent. It's money, specifically money , for a studio. A studio is the biggest overhead a young artist has. No studio, no space to make work. No work, nothing to show, nothing to sell.

The moment right after graduation is the pivot point. Some artists find a way through: temporary studio space, a part-time job, enough income to keep working until a gallery takes them on or a show sells. Others don't find that way through, and they stop making work, not because they've lost the will, but because they can't afford the space to do it in, and need to prioritise security through their job to pay their bills.

This award exists for that gap. One artist a year, chosen by myself and the curator of the graduate exhibition, someone whose work and direction stood out to us as genuinely worth backing. £5,000 doesn't solve a career. It buys an opportunity to build momentum, a year in a studio, which is often exactly the year that decides whether there's a career at all.

Sources here

Award Winners

• 2023 – Aisha Seriki, Royal College of Art (fine art photographer, inaugural winner)

• 2024 – Ross Head, Slade School of Art (textured abstract paintings)

• 2025 – Hattie Quigley, Edinburgh College of Art (large-scale oil paintings)