£20k RBA Annual Exhibition

AI Interactive Portrait, Bursaries & Commissions, Children's Art Prizes

Oct 18, 2023

Hi folks. This week’s edition is a day later than usual to coincide with the launch of the Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition 2024.

You don’t need to be based in Britain to enter (scroll down to the ‘Sales” section for important info for International Artists), entry fee is £20 per work, £14 for under 35s.

200 non-member works (painting, sculpture, drawing and original prints) will be selected to show alongside members for a group show at the Mall Galleries, London (29 Feb-9 Mar) and will be eligible for all prizes bar the Whistler Award.

Speaking of prizes, the grand prize of £10,000 is donated by Huaicun Zhang Hon RBA for her choice of an outstanding work in the exhibition. Lots more awards add up to an additional £10,000 of prizes. View the 2023 award winners. (closes 10th Jan)

Short video above with overview of the 200 year Anniversary Exhibition earlier this year. View the RBA annual exhibition catalogues archive dating back to 1824.

See also the £5,000 RBA Rome Scholarship for UK based artist aged 18-35 (10 Jan).

Bursaries & Commissions

Hesketh Hubbard Bursaries - London's largest life drawing group, the Hesketh Hubbard Art Society, is offering three free year-long membership bursaries to young artists aged between 18 and 30, free entry (3 Nov)

Remembering Together commission - Culture Aberdeen are looking for artists to create a permanent public art memorial to the people of Aberdeen who have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. £1,000 will be awarded to 3 artists to develop designs with an overall budget of £70,000 for winning design, UK (22 Nov)

UK Art Competitions - 13 open

Photography Competitions - 7 open

Alexander Calder’s glass walled studio, inside his New England home (1955)

Children’s Art Competitions

Newly opened on MoMa…

World Children’s Haiku Contest - 3 winners to attend Tokyo awards ceremony with flights & accommodation expenses, create an original haiku and accompanying artwork on the theme ‘Family’, ages 15 and under, based in UK (28 Feb 22)

Never Such Innocence Art Competition - Prizes TBA, create art around the question ‘How Does War Affect People’s Lives?’, 9-18 year olds, global (24 May)

Kid’s Art Competitions - 10 open

AI & the Interactive Portrait

Artnet reports on an A.I. interactive portrait debuted at Saatchi Gallery last week that uncannily mimics human emotions through our movements. Jesper Eriksson, one of the project’s leaders, on the inspirations behind the work:

“My initial references mostly came from art history and especially early Expressionism,” said one of the project’s leaders, Jesper Eriksson, citing Klimt, Schiele, Van Gogh, and the Post-Impressionists. “I enjoyed the philosophical switch that started at that time, the whole notion of being able to express internal states of being, thoughts, and emotions. What if we could take that one step further and create a portrait that explicitly tried to model these things in real time? Maybe we can push the notion of portraiture a little bit further.”