THE 2023 ALDRIDGE JUNIOR SIGNATURE ART PRIZE
THE 2023 WINNERS
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FINE ART
Winner: Calissa Chapple
School: Brighton Aldridge Community Academy
Title: Dead and Buried
Description:
A deeply personal ink drawing created using a dip pen on carefully sized paper, featuring Nik Fiend—an iconic singer—sprawled in chaos. The work explores identity, emotion, and texture through raw mark-making and expressive composition. -
GRAPHICES
Winner: Elliot Hine
School: Darwen Aldridge Enterprise Studio
Title: Charlie.B.Grim
Description:
Developed around a coffee company theme, this piece blends Victorian design with modern graphics. Created using photo montage, the work showcases a fictional brand identity with a darkly whimsical tone. -
PHOTOGRAPHY
Winner: Abigail Birney
School: Darwen Aldridge Enterprise Studio
Title: Thé Fantaisie
Description:
A fantasy-themed photograph created for a fictional coffee brand. Styled with medieval aesthetics and shot on location with a self-chosen costume, the piece combines art direction, narrative, and styling to evoke magic and escape.
Note: Abigail also won the Overall Prize, including an internship with DegreeArt. -
FILM
Winner: Jake Fradley
School: UTC@MediaCityUK
Title: Consequence
Description:
A short mockumentary exploring identity and trauma. Jake served as co-scriptwriter, director, lead actor, cinematographer, and editor. The film deals with guilt, memory, and the psychological effects of one’s actions. -
TEXTILES + SCULPTURE
Winner: Hiway Polat
School: Duke’s Aldridge Academy
Title: Balconies
Description:
A 3D architectural sculpture inspired by traditional Japanese and Chinese wooden buildings. Constructed using layered card, the piece explores cultural architecture, form, and texture with intentionally rough finishes to reflect historic structures.
Tamta Giorgadze | Kensington Aldridge Academy | Textiles + Sculpture Finalist 'Voice' I created this work in December 2022, against the background of increased violations of women's rights and violence in the world. Even in the 21st century, the violation of women's rights and violence has not decreased but rather increased, which is a very disturbing and shocking factor. My work focuses on women who are victims of domestic violence and harassment, who do not have freedom of speech, the right to express their opinion, the right to express their desire, or the opportunity to ask for help. When you look at the artwork, you can see the lips and the usual letters on them, but if you look closely in one part, you will notice that the words 'HELP' appear from the letters. It is with this part that I am trying to convey the situation of that woman, who tries to secretly inform us in various ways that she needs help – help to survive, help for life, help for freedom.
Mia Counsell | Darwen Aldridge Enterprise Studio | Textiles + Sculpture Finalist 'Inner Sanctuary 1' I chose to create this piece in order to express the beauty of the inner sanctuary. Typically, the initial reaction of the public towards the inner mechanisms of the body is that it appears to be grotesque, an attitude of ignorance to the true intricacies of the human form and how it not only gives us life but also our own unique form. Each body can be both modified and melded into a person’s individual features which can have both negative and positive internal effects. The piece creates an abstract visual effect mirroring both the beauty and horrors of the human form and its alteration.
Abigail Hawkins | Darwen Aldridge Community Academy | Textiles + Sculpture Finalist 'Reincarnating Alice' Flaws can be described as many different things, however, I chose to look at them in the way that society expects from women. I explored aspects such as social media and mental health but wanted to conclude with a piece of work based on a protest against everything I had to explore within my work. The blazer I had created included words and phrases that showed how women especially were expected to act, speak and look a certain way. I then photographed a female modelling this jacket as if she was protesting and fighting against this. When designing and developing the blazer I took inspiration from the V&A exhibition book ‘Alice: Curious & Curiouser ‘ which discussed many versions of Alice from ‘Alice in Wonderland’. I wanted to create my own version of Alice, therefore designed the blazer based on her appearance within the story.
Jack Wilding | Darwen Aldridge Community Academy | Textiles + Sculpture Finalist 'Un-stitched' This piece is an expression of the inner turmoil we all face. At some angles, we may appear ordinary and fine, yet from another, you might be able to see the strain, stress and disorder that could be mere moments away that can cause us to become unravelled. I am really proud of this piece of work as I was focusing on mental health and looked at the work of Adam Riches who does amazing portraits in scribble for inspiration. I wanted to emulate his work in a different medium and decided to try free machine embroidery. This piece was actually my first attempt, and I am impressed with how it turned out. The image clearly shows a controlled, expressionless face that explodes into chaos.
Louis Barker | UTC@MediaCityUK | Photography + Film Finalist 'Apathy' Apathy is a film about mental health. I like to think the film is incredibly interpretive as it follows our main character, Riley as they struggle with their mental health, through trauma as a child that has hurt them as an adult leading them to do inhumane things such as murder. The film feels almost not real, like a dream sequence as we see the world through Riley's perspective, simple but beautiful until reality hits them with what they have done.
Mark Nemeth | UTC@MediaCityUK | Photography + Film Finalist 'Root of The Pining Tree' This photo was taken in September 2021 in the Highlands of Scotland. During my week-long visit to Scotland, I took a few pictures to capture the environment and tradition. This picture in particular is about a wishing tree 'embarked' with coins. As we walked through the forest I saw this one with a glimmer of sunlight glancing through the empty spaces of the branches behind. and I quickly snapped a photo. As there were many trees around, I took this one in particular due to the singular aspect of the story that's displayed here and the cascade of trees with sunlight shining through in the background.
Nusaybah Yousaf | Darwen Aldridge Enterprise Studio | Photography + Film Finalist 'Odd One Out' I created this piece to be part of a series during my A Level 'Collections' project, for that project I was going for the collections of others' memories and how they felt about themselves back then and how they wished they could change things. They also compared how they were back then to how they were now whilst whiting out anyone else in the image, making them appear to be the 'Odd one out' as the title of the piece makes clear. By removing the other subjects in the photograph and singling out the main subject, the audience is forced to recognise the 'odd one out' in the image. We are pushed to explore our own memories and that daunting feeling of being the 'odd one out.'
James Maynard | Darwen Aldridge Enterprise Studio | Photography + Film Finalist 'Falling' Falling' is based on the notion of flaws and incompetence. Fear, terror, and anxiety that comes out of losing grip over significant things the feeling of falling may represent a sense of helplessness.
Alisha Dearn | Darwen Aldridge Community Academy | Graphics Finalist 'Searching the Web' The web is to represent the girl trying to hide behind her layers, so she doesn’t fully reveal herself to society. As she would be feeling like she is losing her sense of security and is trying to use every part of herself, in this case, her eye, to prevent that from happening, this is so she can keep herself and her layers together. I find this piece to be intriguing and has so many perceptions towards it as to what the meaning is behind it, and to help attribute to what depression can feel like, to create a better understanding so that it will help society.
Aaron Lynch | UTC@MediaCityUK | Graphics Finalist 'Abstract Orangutan' I made this for my A level I'm doing about making things for a fictional zoo being built in Manchester. I drew out the outline with paper and pen and scanned it into illustrator I traced the lines with the pen tool making the lines thick and changing the uniform to width profile one. This makes the lines look sleek and sharp making them stand out against the colours added later, finishing with a light orange background.
Pip Kosyl | Darwen Aldridge Enterprise Studio | Graphics Finalist 'A Series of Unfortunate Events, Part 2' For this particular project, I chose to retell one of my favourite books, that being Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning". I adore this book series, but knew I wouldn't be able to create an image for each of the thirteen books. And so, I chose to focus on the first. I split the story up into six images, with this one (Part 2) portraying the moment the Baudelaire siblings arrive at the villainous Count Olaf's house. I took visual inspiration from the illustrator Saul Bass, but also decided to include plenty of detail, as an ode to the book's illustrator, Brett Helquist.
Eva Davies | UTC@MediaCityUK | Graphics Finalist Inside the Disguise I wanted to show the theme of disguise in my image. I took two people and distorted them until they were unrecognisable.
Michelle Jasmin Komenda | Kensington Aldridge Academy | Fine Art Finalist 'The Human Body in Colour' I was inspired to create this piece after visiting the In The Black Fantastic exhibition in London, where I was introduced to the work of Sedrick Chisom for the first time - more specifically The Hero of Dionysus Emerged Inching Through Umbrage (2020) - who was able to influence me with his use of colour and focus on the human figure in his pieces. My intent for this artwork was to honour the human body and allow it to be looked at from a different light.
Daniella .J. Tugume | Duke’s Aldridge Academy | Fine Art Finalist 'Her Freedom' As a black person in the UK, I often find it hard to get opportunities and through my art piece, I want to portray gender discrimination that not only takes place in the UK but also around the world. Women are given the least opportunities because they are seen as inferior, menial and feeble. For example; how many female prime ministers has the UK had over the years? Only 3 of all the 79. This shows how desensitized and callous we've become because of the male patriarchal dominance in society today. The vibrant colours on the turban represent the sovereignty that every woman should proudly have. I want to help stop gender discrimination and also this is in honour of Mahsa Amini.
Alex Blas | UTC@MediaCityUK | Fine Art Finalist 'Tokyo Japan Temple' This is what the title says that it is the Tokyo Japan Temple. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the temple that I have drawn here is the symbol of our faith. We see it as the House of the Lord and where we perform what are called saving ordinances so that we can live with God again our Father in Heaven. The temple is to help strengthen our spirits, give hope, serve, love and do our Father's work, overall changing us into better individuals and who God wants us to be. I thought I'd do the Japan temple after Ian Murphy with his fine art around Japanese/Chinese Pagodas.
William Towler | Darwen Aldridge Community Academy | Fine Art Finalist 'Nowhere' The piece was made because I enjoyed the game, Hollow Knight. Our theme for year 11 was ‘Identity’, and whilst I was dealing with mental health issues, I never liked expressing myself in art. I made the piece was made because I wanted to make it, and the idea that art must have a meaning to be worth something should never be the case, otherwise, art would always drag us back into reality, something which I believe art was made to help us escape from.
Alexandra Pasarica | Duke’s Aldridge Academy | Fine Art Finalist 'Rose' My favourite thing about this picture is its simplicity. I like the way that the coloured pencil stands out. I like traditional drawing techniques. However, I am always interested in learning about different styles and forms of art.
