“For there to be a future in any form of art, one must see the young people coming through and back them wherever one thinks it’s wise,” says businessman and philanthropist Chris Ingram. Having formed one of the most important private collections of Modern British art on public view, Ingram pivoted a decade ago to a fresh approach to celebrating artistic talent – and entrepreneurial spirit – by setting up the Ingram Prize, a new showcase and series of awards for artists recently graduated from British art schools. “What we’re doing with the prize is backing the best.”
In the lead up to the tenth edition of the Ingram Prize this November, Ingram’s team have taken the opportunity to look back over a decade-long learning curve. “I am someone who likes to plan, and the prize doesn’t let me do that,” says Jo Baring, Director of The Ingram Collection. It was a shift, notes Baring, from the security of the past to a capricious future. “It is completely unpredictable. We never know who will apply, or what I will find in the submissions. And that is its joy.”
It’s a joy that has reaped dividends. The prize has grown exponentially, from approximately 100 entries in 2016 to almost 3,000 for the tenth edition. In the approach to the 2025 prize, the prize already has 238 alumni, artists who have exhibited in the annual exhibition of finalists. Each year three purchase prizes are chosen, along with a Founder’s Award selected by Ingram.
The endeavour sprang out of Ingram’s purchasing activities at the degree shows of various art colleges across Britain. Ingram and his team wanted to formalise that support by setting up a prize. Part of the venture was to professionalise artists’ practices, to educate artists in “the unsexy stuff like tax, copyright, protecting yourself online,” says Baring. Such practical advice – “the tools, a framework” – is delivered through a programme of talks, one-to-one mentoring, exhibition opportunities and visits to the studios of professional artists. “My favourite memory is a studio visit the prize team had arranged with the artist Nick Goss,” recalls Oliver Eglin, an alumnus of the 2017 shortlist. “Meeting an established artist and hearing him speak candidly about his career was really insightful.”
The first edition of the prize went surprisingly smoothly, recalls Baring. This was largely because the team had existing relationships with art schools, who put the word out to their students and alumni. “And what we realised really quickly was that people really wanted this. The prize has never been an ego thing for the Ingram Collection. It’s central to the prize that it is not about us, it’s about the artists.” And the artists concur. “The Ingram Prize is the best open call prize in the UK,” says Corey Whyte, one of the winners of the inaugural prize. “It’s a perfect early stepping stone.”
The prize’s educative role seeks to illuminate the opaque business of making a living as an artist, including how to appropriately price works. This is particularly relevant with performance art, explains Baring. If a performance is purchased, what does that mean? How many times should an artist perform it? “We try really hard to be a broad church and answer these questions.”
The logistics of running the prize – staging an exhibition of some 30 shortlisted works, publishing a catalogue, liaising with artists, maintaining an online entry system – are daunting. “Back in 2016 it was all completely new to us,” recalls Alison Price, the Collection Manager. “We really just said ‘let’s create an art prize’ and went from there, totally from scratch. I had never worked directly with artists before – my experience had all been in the auction world.”
The 2020 prize – at the height of the Covid Pandemic – brought unique challenges, not least the inability to stage an exhibition. But it also created remarkable moments. “In the lead up to the prize we did a series of ‘Instagram Lives’ in which Jo had one-to-one chats with all of the finalists, speaking about their work, how they were coping with lockdown, book recommendations, anything and everything,” recalls Price. “It was such a good way to connect and to get to know everyone despite the difficult circumstances.”
The support of the Ingram Prize was “critical” during lockdown, says Kristina Chan, who won in 2020 with a series of gem-like bronze seed sculptures. “The funds allowed me to set up my own studio, purchase a press, and continue making and collaborating at a time when I might otherwise have had to stop.”
The Ingram Prize charts its own course. Entries are not restricted by size: large-scale works have included Losel Yauch’s life-size silk-draped equine piece Wind Horse (2022) and Catriona Robertson’s Burrow Sprout Grow (2021), a towering architectural collage of concrete, rubble and corrugated metal. Also, again unlike with many other art prizes, there have always been three winners for the main prize.
The prize has developed at pace with its growing popularity. But what has not changed, Baring observes, is the innocence and verve of the applicants. “There’s always a lack of cynicism when dealing with the artists. There is a belief that art is valuable and important and what they’re saying is important and they are engaging with issues. There is still that wonderful hopefulness that artists have at that age, which is so refreshing and you want to keep in them.”
What about the subject matter? “The themes are universal,” Baring says. “It’s all about how we live in the world and how we move within it, how we respond to one another.” The message might be the same but the mediums are now more varied. “At the beginning there was more painting,” says Baring. “That has changed in terms of art schools and what is being produced.” The prize has showcased a vast array of mediums. In addition to paintings, works on paper, sculptures, photographs and performance pieces, there have been ceramics, textiles, videos, and installations of all sorts. Artists have grappled with cashmere and copper, bioplastics and silicon. Baring smiles: “One of the artists we have just sent on a residency to Florence is a knitter.”
Baring maintains that “showing with us is just the beginning.” Many of the participating artists have used the prize as a springboard to future success. Sin Wai Kin, a winner in 2017, was nominated for the Turner Prize five years later; Alvin Ong, a 2019 recipient, has enjoyed solo shows in Sydney and Seoul. And Emma Prempeh, the British artist of Ghanaian and Vincentian heritage and another of the 2019 winners, was recently included in a group show at Gagosian in New York. “The Ingram Prize is a solid milestone in what will be a marathon of an art career,” observed Tami Soji-Akinyemi, who won the Founder’s Award in 2024. “It reassured me that I was on the right track.“
The Ingram Collection of 20th century British art – which includes masterpieces by Henry Moore, Elisabeth Frink and Barbara Hepworth – allows the public to experience a field fixed in time and narrative (although the collection is unusual in the way it positions lesser-known pieces or mediums on par with iconic works). The Ingram Prize, however, remains a work in progress. And its future is unwritten, intentionally so.
“What I have learnt over the ten years of the prize is never to be prescriptive in terms of what I want,” Baring says. “The prize has developed in response to the artists who have participated and given their feedback, and I hope that we keep that ethos in the years to come. To actually be helpful to artists.”
At the ten-year milestone, the prize’s founder has taken stock of his venture. “The prize encourages people to look at not just art but good art. We’ve put together something that has grown in stature,” says Ingram. “We seem to be one of those right at the top setting our sights on the future and not only the past.”
© Christian House 2025
The 2025 Ingram Prize Exhibition will take place from 27 – 30 November at Unit 1 Gallery ǀ Workshop in London. Follow us on Instagram @ingramcollectionuk for more details and to hear the shortlist announcement later this month.