Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2025 Exhibition

Established in 1994, the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize is regarded as the foremost annual open exhibition dedicated to drawing in the UK. On Wednesday 8th October, the 2025 Awards of £27,000 were announced.

From a diverse and impressive worldwide submission of works, 82 drawings by 76 artists were shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2025 exhibition. A further 21 working drawings by 20 candidates were shortlisted for the Working Drawing Award.

A total of 103 works by 95 drawing practitioners, chosen by two distinguished Selection Panels are on show in the exhibition: 82 drawings by 76 artists were selected for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2025 exhibition and awards by Fiona Bradley OBE, Director of Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery, Kieran Long, Broadcaster and Director of Amos Rex in Helsinki, and Soheila Sokhanvari, British-Iranian artist. 

At the Exhibition Launch at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London on Wednesday 8 October 2025, the five awards went to:

• First Prize of £8,000 awarded to Olivia Rowland for I am Destroy, 2024
• Second Prize of £5,000 awarded to  Eleanor Wood for Dust Jackets 3, 2024
• Student Award of £2,000 awarded to Wei Wang for The Presentation of the Altar, 2024
• Working Drawing Award of £2,000 awarded to Kanto Ohara Maeda for The Bathhouse
• The biennial Evelyn Williams Drawing Award of £10,000 and solo exhibition at Hastings Contemporary was awarded to Eric Butcher for TR 1058 and his exhibition proposal.

The 2025 exhibition marks the 8th year of generous support from the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust for Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize. The 2025 edition also marks the fifth biennial Evelyn Williams Drawing Award made by the  Evelyn Williams Trust to support development of a solo exhibition for Hastings Contemporary.

A panel of esteemed selectors - Fiona Bradley OBE, Director of Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery, Kieran Long, Broadcaster and Director of Amos Rex in Helsinki, and Soheila Sokhanvari, British-Iranian Artist - meticulously reviewed the submitted drawings at Trinity Buoy Wharf to select the shortlist and award-winners.

The First Prize of £8,000 was awarded to Olivia Rowland for I am Destroy, 2024, a hand drawn artist’s book, 23 x 16 x 3cm.  

Olivia Rowland’s practice centres on a mimetic and performative process of drawing and writing to produce fluid text-image forms and visual poetry.

Acting out the rhythms of OCD, anxiety, rage, compulsion, humour and play, the work represents a fragmented yet playful narrative, moving between monstrous alter-egos, absurd repetitions and diaristic wordplay to explore contradictions of femininity and internalised violence.

Olivia said: “I'm overwhelmed and shy and excited all at once that such a personal piece of myself is going to be touring nationally. Sorry for all the swearing and infantile bits. I hope you have as much of a cathartic giggle reading it as I had making it.”

Olivia Rowland was born in 1994 in Stoke-on-Trent, and lives and works in Manchester. She studied BFA Fine Art at the University of Oxford (2013–16), MA Print at the Royal College of Art, London (2017–19), and completed a PhD at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2025. Her solo exhibitions include PICKLEWORMS, P3 Annihilation Eve at K-House Gallery, Manchester (2025) and I Am Destroy at K-House Gallery, Manchester (2024). She has exhibited in group shows such as Observers & Makers at The Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead (2023); Juncture at Brampton Museum, Newcastle-under-Lyme (2022); and the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, London (2021). Awards include the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts and Media, Venice (2018); The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award (2017); Royal Drawing School Residency, Dumfries House (2017); The Red Mansion Art Prize (2016).

Eleanor Wood received the Second Prize of £5,000 for her work Dust Cover, 3, 2024, oil & wax on acrylic mending tissue with acetate and digital print, 30 x 42 x 3.5cm

Eleanor has two works in the exhibition, both part of a series, Dust Jacket, which takes its title from the detachable paper sleeves that traditionally protect hardcover books. Beginning with the hidden interiors of a personal collection of Ladybird Books for Children published in 1956, the works explore surfaces that bear the traces of time: stains, blemishes, folds, and wear, as sites of memory and presence.

Wood first creates digital prints on acetate, coated with mending tissue and acrylic medium, before working over them in oil paint and wax. Perforations across the central areas and folded flaps echo the indentations of paragraphs, evoking what is caught between a book and its cover: residues of touch, ghosts of text, imprints of reading.

Born in London in 1955, Eleanor Wood studied BA Fine Art at Winchester School of Art (1974–77) and MA Painting at Chelsea School of Art (1979–80). She has exhibited internationally, with recent exhibitions at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (2022), Strata Gallery, Santa Fe (2023), Platform A Gallery, Middlesbrough (2023), Phoenix Art Space, Brighton (2024), Don Soker Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2024), and Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, London (2025). Eleanor lives and works in North Norfolk.

Wei Wang received the Student Award of £2,000 for her drawing The Presentation of the Altar, 2024, made in watercolor, gold foil & fineliner on paper, 81 x 61cm.    

Born in Quangzhou, Fujang in China, Wei Wang is currently studying for a practice-led PhD in Design at the University of Leeds. She lives and works in Leeds, UK.

This exquisite drawing depicts a traditional altar for deity worship in her hometown in the Minnan region of Southern China. Composed of symbolic offerings: fruits, flowers, tea, incense, and delicacies, the altar is arranged with ritual precision, reflecting both cultural memory and spatial order.

Wei Wang explains ‘‘Through a slow and contemplative drawing process, I attempted to transform this ephemeral ritual setup into a meditative visual space. For me, the act of drawing became a form of embodied worship - an effort to capture fleeting gestures of devotion and render them visible."

The Working Drawing Award is a special category within the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize that celebrates the role of drawing within architecture, design and making processes, chosen by a selection panel comprising Pablo Garcia, Associate Professor at the School of the Institute of Chicago, Kieran Long, Director of Amos Rex in Helsinki, and Sunand Prasad OBE PPRIBA, Principal at Perkins & Will in London.

The Working Drawing Award of £2,000 was awarded to Kanto Ohara Maeda for The Bathhouse, an ever-moving background for a film. The drawing facilitates an idea – or story, to be made from it, as the animation unfolds.

According to the artist, this qualifies as a working drawing “as my own ideas for the film were developed and planned through the physical making of the drawing over several weeks. The drawing itself is a coalescence of several parts with a backdrop”. The drawing is there to be worked, or animated, on, and undergoes be worked (animated) on, and is constantly ‘in work’: as its different parts move, the drawing changes, and facilitates new ideas..

The sketches from Maeda’s sketchbook are planning tools. They notate, through scribbled floor plans, perspectives, and storyboards, the ideas of a fictional bathhouse. Rather than designing from the outside-in, the film designer works from the inside out, around a specific feeling. The design is sketched not only in plan but in thumbnails sequenced along a timeline.

Kanto Ohara Maeda (b. 1998 Iida, Japan) studied MA Architecture at the University of Edinburgh (2018-22), and MA Animation at the Royal College of Art, London (2023-24). Group exhibitions include: London Creates: Archisource Drawing of the Year, Truman Brewery, London (2025); Royal College of Art Graduate Show, RCA White City, London (2024); Brighton International Animation Festival, Fabrica, Brighton (2024); Architecture Film Festival London, online (2021). Awards: Special Mention for Hand Drawn Award, London Creates (2025); Special Mention for Best Student Film, Brighton International Animation Festival (2024); Winner of Best New Media, Architecture Film Festival London

The Evelyn Williams Drawing Award of £10,000 and a solo exhibition at Hastings Contemporary was awarded to Eric Butcher for T/R 1058.

T/R. 1058 is made entirely by destroying Butcher’s own previous work. According to the artist, “It is the result of a process of investigation into my own studio practice, an attempt at its systematic deconstruction and a response to profound environmental anxiety.” Confronted by the overwhelming environmental problems facing the world, the idea of a studio practice seemed vain, selfish and indulgent to Butcher. “What is it that my work consisted in but taking precious resources and turning them in to useless objects?”

His solution was to subject his entire practice to “a sort of forensic examination”. Pulling his work apart, both intellectually and physically, “peeling the skins of graphite suspended in an acrylic gel from their aluminium supports”, he began categorising them according to a basic taxonomy. The resulting skins, fragments and traces of graphite are presented sandwiched between sheets of glass like specimens. They provide a record or index of past artistic endeavours, a ‘natural history’ of his creative past. Henceforth the artist will use only those materials already available in the studio; using up, repurposing and recycling what he already has without consuming more. “When I have run out of materials, I will simply stop making art,” he commented.

Eric Butcher (b.1970 Singapore) studied BA Philosophy at Cambridge University (1990-94), MA Painting at Wimbledon School of Art, UAL (2000- 01), and PGCE at the Institute of Education, UCL (2001-02). Solo exhibitions include: Shadow Archive, GPS Gallery, London (2025); An End Always has a Start, Saturation Point, London (2022); Sweet Heresy, Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London (2020); Artificial Light, Nancy Toomey Fine Art, San Francisco (2018); A Synthetic Kind of Love, Galerie Robert Drees, Hanover, Germany (2013). Group exhibitions include: Taking Time, The Cut, Halesworth (2024); A Territory of Oneself, Zembla Gallery, Hawick, Scotland (2023); Die Wat Spaart, Die Wat Heeft, Galerie Robert Drees, Hanover, (2023); Perpetual Arrival, Platform A Gallery, Middlesbrough (2023); Accrochage, Galerie Robert Drees, Hanover, Germany (2022). Awards include: Arts Council, England (2013); Artist in Residence, Benson- Sedgewick Engineering, London (2010); Research Fellowship, Arts Institute at Bournemouth (2007); Multiple Perspectives Fellowship, Centre for Art International Research/Liverpool School of Art (2007). He lives and works in Oxfordshire in the UK.

Commendations were also made for drawings by: Bulent Abosoglu, Euan Gray and Layla Jabbari.

Visitors can discover all of the shortlisted and award-winning works in the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2025 exhibition at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London from Thursday 9 October to Sunday 19 October 2025.

The exhibition is free to visit and open from 11am to 6pm. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated Exhibition Publication, a downloadable Education Pack, and daily programme of events you can learn about here.