A contemporary art award
The objective of the Mansfield-Ruddock Art Prize is to open up new conversations around contemporary art, to inspire students and visitors, and to support some of the many talented artists emerging from the Ruskin School of Art. We acquire one graduate and one undergraduate piece each year from the Ruskin for Mansfield College.
Principal Helen Mountfield, KC, said: “We are delighted to reflect the imaginative character of Mansfield College in the award of Mansfield-Ruddock awards. The Prize is intended to support Ruskin School artists at an early stage in their careers, and to inspire, delight and intrigue the Mansfield community and our visitors with the possibilities and stimulus of exciting modern art. We are hugely grateful to our alumnus Sir Paul Ruddock and the Ruddock Foundation for the Arts for making the awards possible, and to our distinguished juries for helping us to select the winners.”
Founder of the award
The Mansfield-Ruddock Art Prize is an award funded by the Ruddock Foundation for the Arts, generously facilitated by Mansfield alumnus Sir Paul Ruddock (Jurisprudence, 1977).
Specialist judging panels
Judges of the Prize over the last few years have included distinguished figures from the art world, including:
- contemporary artist, Rana Begum
- Joy Labinjo, artist and winner of the Mansfield-Ruddock Art Prize 2022
- architect Amanda Levete CBE
- Adam Lowe, Founder of Factum Arte and Factum Foundation
- Yana Peel, Global Head of Arts and Culture at Chanel
- BAFTA-winning film-maker, Simon Pummell (English, 1977)
- Sir Nicholas Serota, art historian, curator and Chair of British Arts Council
- Victoria Siddall, Director of Frieze Art Fairs
- entrepreneur Matthew Slotover OBE, founder of Frieze Art Fairs
- Stephanie Straine, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Galleries of Scotland
- artist Marc Quinn
- contemporary artist Edmund de Waal CBE
2024 Winners
Eunjo Lee – Lullaby O’ The Ruin, 2024
2D experimental animation, 4k, 16 min
- Directed by Eunjo Lee
- Music by Juliet Merchant
- Sound design and editing by Harry Charlton
- Voiceover by Steph Hartop
Eunjo Lee (b.1996, South Korea) is an artist and filmmaker based in London and Seoul. She focuses on 3D experimental animation and video art, blending theoretical and mythological elements to expand the sense of life. Through digital media, Eunjo creates ecological narratives that explore the interconnectedness of all beings, achieved through the spiritual potential of technology in the context of world-building.
Eunjo Lee recently graduated in MFA Fine Art with Distinction from the Ruskin School of Art. ‘Lullaby O’ The Ruin’ has also been chosen for the final selection to be screened at NeMaf, the Seoul International ALT Cinema & Media Festival 2024.
In 2023, she was honoured with several awards, including the Warden’s Prize from Goldsmiths University for her BA in Fine Art and History of Art with First Class Honours, the Best Animation Award at the Feel The Reel International Film Festival, and New Blood Art Emerging Art Prize. Eunjo previously created 3D visuals for the Techno-Tantrik Embodiment Project ‘Your Rage Is Sacred’ at Goldsmiths and FormaHQ led by artist Clémentine Bedos (2023), produced a music video for Paris Paloma’s upcoming song ‘Last Woman on Earth’ (2024), showcased her video art at Modern Art Oxford Gallery (2024), JdP Music Building (2024), Rich Mix (2023), and participated in group exhibitions at Guts Project Gallery ‘Silent Betwixt’ (2024), Safe House ‘Who U R’ (2023), Matchstick PineHouse ‘Video night’ (2023), and The Take Courage Gallery ‘Mother Tongue’, ‘Crossing Path’ (2023).
She has prior experience as a filmmaker in Seoul, working on various projects for the National IT Industry Promotion Agency and the Seoul Foundation for Arts from 2020 to 2022.
Eunjo will be holding her first solo exhibition at the Niru Ratnam Gallery in London in 2025.
Commenting on her prize, Eunjo said: “While it is easy to feel uncertain and waver in the long-term commitment that the journey of being an artist entails, this award has provided me with immense support and encouragement as I take my first steps post-graduation, for which I am truly grateful. It has strengthened my belief in my work, giving me the drive to continue developing. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the judges for valuing my work and recognising its potential.
“Moving forward, as an artist focusing on digital media, I plan to create works that explore the primordial archetypes of the human mind and reinterpret them within a contemporary mythological context, in gratitude for the support this prize has provided. I would also like to extend my gratitude to my tutors and peers at the Ruskin for their collaboration and guidance, dedicating this honour especially to my tutor Adham, Juliet for composing the music, Harry for his work on the sound, and Steph for the narration.”
Jamie Bragg – ‘My pal Dixon with my chum the Donk!’, Egypt 1916
Oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas, 2024
Explaining the background to his winning piece, Jamie says: “I was rifling through some old family photo albums. I found a paper sleeve full of photographs of landscapes, grazing cows, olive trees and white houses. There were also more disturbing images of dead soldiers and war machines.
“The photographs were tiny. I found out they were taken by my great grandfather Willis Bragg, who grew up working class in east London. He was a serviceman in the British Army, stationed in Salonica, Egypt and Palestine between 1915-1916. He wasn’t allowed a camera and these photographs were taken in secret.
“Despite the allure of the photographs, I began to see them as documents of trauma. The Balfour Declaration was sent in 1917, just after my great grandfather’s regiment left British Mandate Palestine. I imagined the gaze of a man I’d never met, in a place now permanently scarred by colonial occupation.”
Predominantly working as a painter, Jamie Bragg (b. 2001, Watford) is an artist who seeks to explore the intersection between photographic and analogue modes of image-making.
Embracing his generation’s easy relationship to the photographic image, Jamie exclusively works from preexisting imagery, culled from sources such as family photographs and online sources. His paintings intricately blend quotidian subject matter with personal experience, splicing together individual and collective memories to capture the tender intricacies of mundane life, navigating ideas of identity, grief, isolation, desire and safety.
Jamie said: “Receiving the Mansfield-Ruddock Art Prize is an incredible and unexpected honour. I feel deeply flattered by the judges for recognizing my work, and for my painting to be acquired by Mansfield College. The award has afforded me the opportunity and stability to help set up my own studio, and I am incredibly excited to embark on the next chapter of my artistic career.”
Brandon Saunders – Blouse and Skirt, 2024
Delivered as pieces of material to be viewed alongside a 3D film, Blouse and Skirt sets to explore the cosmic horror intrinsic to White Supremacy by posing it as an alien entity; through the language of West African fabric making traditions (not limited to Fante Flags). When activated, the audience sees a woven speculative future, through the cultural lens of a hypothetical black tribe. Inspired by Christina Sharpe’s “In the Wake: On Blackness and Being”; this piece aims to make clear that Black freedom and survival can exist forever, but so can White Supremacy if not properly faced.
“The accompanying piece I play was performed in an empty piano room in Cowley. My college mistook me for an intruder many times.”
Brandon Saunders (b. 2000, Grand Cayman) graduated from Newcastle University in 2022 and obtained his Master’s degree from the Ruskin School of Art in 2024. Saunders’ work which magnifies diasporic perspectives in the Caribbean sphere has been exhibited in the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands many times. This includes; ‘Upon the Seas’ (2017), where his piece would be adopted into the National Gallery’s permanent collection. The ‘Cross Currents’ exhibition would see Brandon as a runner-up for the ‘Emerging Artist Award’ until the ‘Reimagined Futures’ (2021) exhibition in which he was the recipient. He has also been a contributor to the development of many Black Diasporic works. ‘Take a Second to Breathe’ is a (Browns) commissioned work directed by Divine Southgate Smith, who oversaw Brandon as lead animator. They would go on to collaborate again with ‘Thicker than water’, an installation displayed in the Sainsbury Center’s “Visions of Ancient Egypt” (2022). As a CGI Technical Director, Brandon would work with a larger team and actualise several black hole sequences for ‘Iwoyi’, a five-screen installation commissioned by the British National Library for their ‘Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music’ (2024) Exhibition.
