Beloved art supply retailer Cass Art is thrilled to announce the exhibition for their 2025 Cass Art Prize, showcasing works by over 50 artists spanning drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation art and mixed media, providing a platform for emerging artists spanning all ages and artistic mediums across the UK and Republic of Ireland.
The Cass Art Prize continues the Cass family’s monumental legacy of supporting artists for more than 125 years. From championing the works of Monet and Van Gogh in 1890s Europe to facilitating the first three commissions on the Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar Square, The Cass Art Prize keeps this pioneering spirit alive for 2025.
Opening to the public from the 24 October the winners of the 2025 edition of The Cass Art Prize will be announced in a ceremony on the 23 October with a cash prize of £10,000 awarded to the winner of the main prize.
Among the shortlist for 2025 is Tony Margerrison, a former homeless addict turned accomplished portrait artist shortlisted for Sherrine, a portrait of his DJ friend putting her makeup on before going out to perform at a club. Margerrison began his practice painting murals at squat parties. Today, a strong sense of community flows through the portraits and London street scenes painted by the artist.
Artist Linda Hubbard is shortlisted for ‘The Collection: Small Shovel for Small Bits. Foundling: We Found His Foot in a Tree. Gaza Kahn Yunis, August 2024 AD’, a heartbreaking life-sized sculpture of a Gazan child’s foot. Throughout the shortlist we see artists bringing some of the most vital issues of our time to the fore of their work.
This year, The Cass Art Prize launched four new categories: The Over 65 Award supported by Cass Art Founder Mark Cass which will champion art made by people aged over 65; The Judge’s New Talent Award, which awards a solo show at Soho Revue selected by guest judge and Soho Revue Founder India Rose James; The Emerging Artist Award supported by Arches, which celebrates artists aged 35 or under; and The Pastel Award supported by Sennelier.
The shortlisted & longlisted artists, who cover an extensive range of disciplines and subjects, include Bella Easton, a South-East London based artist and curator who creates large-scale works through a hybrid of painting and printmaking. Using hand-cut woodblocks and oil paint in unconventional ways, she builds geometric, architectural surfaces that echo theatrical sets or mirrored interiors. Her layered compositions explore memory, space, and emotional tension, balancing symmetry and order with shifts, ruptures, and a quiet unease.
Taking particular inspiration from historic wallpaper found in her home that imprinted onto her walls, she has developed and replicated this printmaking to generate complex, light-filled accounts of the relationships and contradictions between natural and artificial, chaotic and orderly, uncanny and familiar. Her work has been widely exhibited in the UK and internationally, with recent shows in Athens, Berlin and Amsterdam, as well as being a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition since 1997.
Based in London, Yasser Claud-Ennin is a self-taught West African artist who creates multifaceted works inspired by his multi-cultural heritage, marrying together fragmented pieces of different nationalities and cultures to create vivid paintings, murals or digital art. One of West Africa’s most promising artists, Yasser discovered his passion for art at a young age being inspired by the traditional crafts and textiles of his community. His nominated artwork is a tender meditation on kinship, capturing a joyful moment of siblings around a bicycle from the 1960s. Set on handwoven Aso-Oke fabric, the work reflects on care, memory, and the family influences that shape who we are and how we belong.
Sculptor Josh C. Wright is a Margate-based artist who repurposes salvaged construction debris including steel, plasterboard and insulation, to create precarious works that navigate the tension between permanence and collapse, strength and fragility. These weathered and discarded industrial remnants are taken from skips outside of local encroaching construction projects. His nominated sculptural piece ‘Everything I Know’ acts as a reminder of the ever-changing urban landscape and the associated conversations on urbanisation, gentrification, and the fragility of our shared spaces. Assertive yet vulnerable, his pieces balance on the threshold of order and disorder, inviting reflection on impermanence and transition. Josh most recently featured in group-exhibition ‘POST//FUTURE’ at Saatchi Gallery.
Lucy Ellerton is a London-based artist working across sculpture, casting, printmaking and installation. Her shortlisted work ‘Scampi Fries (For Katie)’ is a quintessential example of her playful work, made from reclaimed London Plane wood that has been sourced from felled trees in central London. Lucy uses materials such as jesmonite, metal, and silicone to create conceptually layered forms that borrow from everyday objects, turning overlooked mass-produced and disposable objects into strange, immortalised memorials. Often balancing sincerity with a dry, sometimes absurd humour, Ellerton reflects on the emotional weight of the everyday and the difficulty of holding onto it.
London-based painter Lorena Levi distils her research taken from the internet, podcasts, psychoanalytical papers, chatroom sites and reddit forums, to create works that merge the traditional practice of oil painting with current technology and subject matter. Her work on show ‘Locks’ depicts the reality of hair loss during medical treatment, paralleling luscious heads of hair with toy doll brushes used in play to accessorise and groom.
Drawing the connection between adult relationships with hair and childhood, the piece reflects on how consumerism has the potential to shape how we view our appearances, and how we form identity around our appearance, in particular hair. Levi won the Astaire Prize in 2021 and the NHS Lothian Tonic Arts award in 2023. Her work has appeared in The Marlborough Gallery, the South London Gallery and the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh.
Currently studying for a BA in Fine Art at Anglia Ruskin University, Loke Catafalque is a Cambridge based textile artist whose work considers queer and trans identity and spirituality. Exploring the relationship between the surgical and the sewn, featuring in the exhibition is a surgical quilt examining the relationship between the artist’s experience with gender affirming surgery and his identity as a textile artist.
London-based satirical artist W*nkers of the World (WOTW) presents a bold installation ‘Who Do You Support’, reimagining the notorious half-and-half scarves sold to tourists outside football grounds, replacing the teams with opposing sides of the so-called ‘culture war’. The topical artwork highlights the dogged unwillingness to find a middle ground in modern political discourse. This piece comes following their 2024 show ‘Shut Up and Stick to Football’ exploring the relationship between politics and football.
The Cass Art Prize 2024 was won by rising British artist Reuben Murray. Murray won for Ada, his portrait of an extraordinary Jamaican Maroon with a Nigerian Yoruba name. The moving piece told the story of African slaves who freed themselves to establish communities of free black people in Jamaica.
This year’s shortlist was chosen by an exciting new judging panel consisting of revered painter and former National Portrait Gallery Portrait Award winner Ishbel Myerscough, beloved Turner Prize-nominated Scottish sculptor and “icon of public art” David Mach RA, Times Radio Arts & Culture producer Tim Allen, Soho Revue Founding Director India Rose James, Artist and Director of The Bomb Factory Pallas Citroen, Curator, Cultural Producer, TV Personality and Attitude Magazine Pride Award-winner Ryan Lanji and internationally exhibited London artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan.
Mark Cass, Founder and CEO of Cass Art says: “My family has a long, proud history of supporting artists. We are delighted to continue this legacy and announce the return of The Cass Art Prize for 2025. Our mission is to fill every town with artists, from professionals to beginners, no matter what age. This year’s prize has again demonstrated the incredible creative talent that exists within the Cass Art and SAA communities across the UK & Ireland, and we can’t wait to showcase our selected Artists in this year’s exhibition.”