The 8th John Ruskin Prize presents a major group exhibition at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London, celebrating contemporary practices that place careful observation and skilled making at their core. Shortlisted from nearly 4,000 international entries, the exhibition reflects the Prize’s commitment to supporting artists, designers and makers whose work defies easy categorisation. Founded in 2012 by The Guild of St. George, the Prize draws on the legacy of John Ruskin — writer, critic, social thinker and tireless advocate for learning through looking.
Responding to the theme Patience in Looking, Truth in Making, the selected works explore the vital relationship between perception and craft — between the eye that truly sees and the hand that responds through material intelligence.
Artwork
Doors of Perception XX is an anatomically derived pierced relief, hand-carved into a slab of Kilkenny marble. Hovering between representation and abstraction, the work emerges through prolonged, tactile engagement with the stone. Carving becomes an act of destructive discovery: fossils surface, stretching perception across deep time and human continuum, while voids admit light and the unknown.
The work marks a pivotal juncture in the artist’s life, yet resists narration, favouring attention instead. On the verso, forms invert, rendering hindsight literal. Rooted in a lineage of carved thresholds, Doors of Perception XX asks how moments of passage are met, endured and understood through the discipline of making.
