The Club: Frieze Camden Art Centre Emerging Artist Prize Winners
Where are they now? The careers of the artists who have won the prestigious award, from Julien Creuzet to Jack O’Brien
Where are they now? The careers of the artists who have won the prestigious award, from Julien Creuzet to Jack O’Brien
When Nat Faulkner won the Frieze Camden Art Centre Emerging Artist Prize at Frieze London this year, the Greenwich-based artist was the latest in a series of early-career practitioners to benefit from the award. Key to its importance is that it offers not just money but hands-on curatorial support and a major solo show at Camden Arts Centre, an institutional milestone in any young artist’s career.
The annual Emerging Artist Prize was launched at Frieze London 2018, selecting an early-career artist from the Focus section of the fair. Here’s how the previous winners have fared since their appearance on the podium…
2018: Wong Ping
Wong Ping won the inaugural Frieze Camden Art Centre Emerging Artist Prize in 2018, with CAC director Martin Clark commenting: ‘The conversation starts now: the exciting thing is to find out what he wants to do and how he wants to work with us.’ The Hong Kong-born artist was shown in New York’s New Museum Triennial ‘Songs of Sabotage’ the same year, attracting global attention for his sexual, gory, cutesy, unsettling, existentialist 8-bit animations. Following his show at CAC in 2019, ‘Heart Digger’, Wong has exhibited widely, developing more elaborate environments for his films, including a billboard on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. His most recent solo show, ‘Edging’, closed at Mak Contemporary in Vienna in March 2024. Read more
2019: Julien Creuzet
‘He is at the point in his career where he needs a big show at an institution in London,’ said juror Francesca Bertolotti-Bailey about the Paris-born, Martinique-raised artist back in 2019. Creuzet’s subsequent stellar trajectory has more than justified her confidence. After being shortlisted for the Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2021, Creuzet participated in the São Paulo, Liverpool and Perfoma biennials, before representing France at the 2024 Venice Biennale. frieze’s Terence Troulliot called his French pavilion ‘a deafening proclamation of otherness as superpower [revealing] an artist achieving great range and subtlety.’ Creuzet is appearing in Stephen Friedman Gallery’s group show, ‘Reverb’, 22 November – 18 December 2024. Read more
2021: Tenant of Culture
Tenant of Culture’s most memorable work when she won the 2021 prize was a consumerist vanitas: a big, spongily deformed multi-sole trainer, part of a series of cut-and-shut footwear pieces exploring labour and fashion’s material self-proliferation. Netherlands artist Hendrickje Schimmel, working under the name Tenant of Culture, realized her Camden Art Centre commission with 2022’s ‘Soft Acid’, examining the 19th-century laundry industry. She has since had several solo shows, including ‘Ladder’ at London’s Soft Opening and ‘In Situ’ at Antwerp’s M HKA in 2023, and was a stand-out of this year’s Amsterdam Art Week. Read more
2022: Marina Xenofontos
At Frieze London 2022, Clark explained that, for the jury, the work of Athens-based artist Marina Xenofontos ‘immediately resonated in its compelling strangeness, elegance and depth.’ Represented by breakout star gallery Hot Wheels, which has since opened a London outpost, Xenofontos’s work fused an uncanny otherness with an exploration of the overlooked fabric of everyday life, creating an eerie semi-familiarity that might be a dream or a holiday on Cyprus (or both). 2023 was a big year for Xenofontos; along with her Camden Art Centre commission, ‘Public Domain’, she had a solo show at the SculptureCenter in New York. This year has seen another solo exhibition, ‘View from Somewhere Near’, at the Kunstverein in Hamburg. Read more.
2023: Jack O’Brien
A full-sized 19th-century horse gig swathed in cling film was one of the defining images of Frieze London 2023. The work of Londoner Jack O’Brien, presented by Ginny on Frederick, embodied his oblique take on expectation and denial, and the power of surroundings, objects and architecture to stimulate and mediate desire. His current Camden Art Centre commission, ‘The Reward’, was preceded by ‘The Theatre and Its Double’ at Between Bridges in Berlin and ‘Nectar’ at Matthew Brown in Los Angeles. O’Brien was frieze magazine’s cover star in October 2024. What higher accolade could there be? Read more
Jack O’Brien, ‘The Reward’, is at Camden Art Centre until 29 December 2024.
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Main image: Julien Creuzet. © Magasin CNAC. Photo: Pascale Cholette
