Rising British artist Reuben Murray has won the first ever Cass Art Prize 2024. The Prize has been created by leading art supply retailer Cass Art, continuing the Cass family’s monumental legacy of supporting artists for over 120 years.
From art inspired by refugee camps and made in mental health units to National Portrait Gallery Portrait Award 2024 nominees – The Cass Art Prize’s 2024 shortlist was a celebration of British art’s diversity, resilience and impact. Work by the nominated artists, from across the length and breadth of the UK and Republic of Ireland, has been exhibited this month in a prestigious exhibition at Copeland Gallery, London.
(Left) The Students Award winner Lexia Hachtmann,
(Right) Mark Cass and Reuben Murray with Ada, Murray’s winning portrait
Photos: Dave Benett/Getty Images
The awards were presented at a prize giving ceremony hosted by Cass Art Founder Mark Cass at Copeland Gallery on 14 November.
Reuben Murray won The Main Prize, being awarded a £10,000 cash prize and a stand at Saatchi Art’s The Other Art Fair 2025. Inspired by Ben Enwonwu’s African Mona Lisa, Murray’s winning piece Ada proudly portraits Ada, an extraordinary Jamaican Maroon with a Nigerian Yoruba name. Telling the story of African slaves who freed themselves to establish communities of free black people in Jamaica, the moving portrait symbolises strength, struggle and heritage.
Murray is a black working-class neuro-divergent artist from London, exploring themes of representation, race, and history through painting, drawing, photography, and collage. Murray’s work addresses ethical and social questions of humanity in the 21st century, offering a reflective space for people of colour.
The Cass Group Staff Award was won by Yuhong Wang, a category celebrating the staff who power Cass Art’s beloved art shops. Yuhong explores image multiplicity and the limitations of space and architecture through her work. She recently participated in the Turps Banana Off-Site Painting Programme and is currently studying at the Royal Academy Schools. Created quickly in one sitting, her winning work ‘Shirine’s Studio Painting at Shirine’s Studio Space’, functions as both a painting and space divider, exploring the relationship between space, flatness, and spontaneous artistic expression.
The Art Educators Award was won by Giuseppe Iozzi, a painter based in Brighton where he teaches art in a secondary school, who explores the concept of time in his work. Created during evenings and weekends, Iozzi’s paintings reflect on the transient nature of a school environment, capturing empty spaces and ghostly traces of students.
(Left) Liquitex Award for Acrylic winner KV Duong, (Right) The Art Educators Award winner Giuseppe Iozzi. Photos: Dave Benett/Getty Images
German-British figurative painter Lexia Hachtmann, who recently completed her Masters at the Slade School of Art, won The Students Award. Her monumental image ‘Early Hours’ depicts wilted and living flowers in a vase referencing the Vanitas still life, reflecting contemporary feelings of despair and hope in a poignant dialogue about life and mortality.
Morag Caister was awarded the Michael Harding Award for Oil Painting for ‘Jonathan and Athena’, part of her ‘Sofa Series’ focusing on portraits set in domestic spaces with the sofa as the central element. After a National Portrait Gallery Portrait Award 2024 nomination, winning Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, and making the Forbes 30 under 30: Art & Culture list and the Evening Standard’s London Art Power List, in the space of just a few years Caister has become one of her generation’s most promising new artists.
The Special Judge’s Award, presented by Pippy Houldsworth went to Terence Wilde. The artist’s clay ‘Pagoda’ represents a sacred space for safety and calmness, featuring decorative black and white patterns and airholes for enhanced tranquillity, resembling a personal folly. ‘Pagoda’ will now be shown in ‘The Box’ at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery. Terence Wilde’s work tells a story of the incredible impact art can have in the everyday lives of communities across the UK.
