Liverpool Art Prize Winner

We’re chuffed at the news that this year’s winner of the Liverpool Art Prize is Robyn Woolston.

Robyn will be awarded £2000 and a solo display at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery in 2013.

We’ve admired Liverpool-based Woolston’s work (which spans film, installation and mixed media) for some time now: from her haunting Field of Dreams installation at Threshold Festival to her dreamy Shadow/Light intervention at Deane Road Cemetery.

A passionate explorer of people, place and culture, Woolston’s sculptural excursions raises knotty questions about our place in the world, our throwaway aesthetics and the economic and ecological skeletons in our closets. Her gaze may be unflinching, but her work is laced with humanity and humour too.

Robyn once travelled to the Sinai Desert to embark on a three-day solo fasting experience with only a sleeping bag and 16 bottles of water for company, so we imagine her move to Liverpool from her native West Midlands must have been a doddle. Whatever, we’re glad to have her, and glad she’s chosen us as her base.

Robyn’s work at the Liverpool Art Prize exhibition is, by her own admission, her most challenging yet: “It’s my most ambitious work in terms of the opportunities and constraints presented by the space. I’ve been working with the Accumulator Tower at Metal so I’m dealing with shifting, and at times ephemeral, light. Plus the height of approximately eleven metres offered up some exciting engineering conundrums.”

Visitors to Metal at Edge Hill Station have also voted on their favourite works. The £1000 People’s Choice Award was awarded, unsurprisingly, to graf artist Tomo.

Tomo said: “Just to be part of the exhibition is the real prize. Most artists on the short list are a lot more established than me so it’s a real honour.”

Liverpool Art Prize, to 9 June
Metal at Edge Hill Station,
Tunnel Road, Liverpool L7 6ND.