2025 Award
‘It's All There But Not Necessarily In The Right Order’ Ink drawing, Adam Sutherland 2025
The winner of The Ampersand Foundation Award 2025 is Adam Sutherland, Director of Grizedale Arts. Described as the culmination of his entire career at Grizedale Arts, Reform Life is an exhibition, public art project, symposium and publication exploring environmentalism and the rural arts movements of the past 100 years. From the first environmental lecture by John Ruskin to the urgencies of now, the project will explore and contextualise significant but little-known art movements of European rural culture, citing these as an alternative and influential history that illuminates the last 50 years of Grizedale Arts’ work.
A symposium will launch seven new commissions across the Coniston Valley, home of Grizedale Arts, John Ruskin and Kurt Schwitters. An exhibition will mark new links between historical and contemporary art and social and political history. There will also be a comprehensive publication that makes the case for rural cultures to be understood as an alternative strand of cultural history and demonstrates their profound influence on global politics and culture.
The five shortlisted organisations were: Camden Arts Centre / Gina Buenfeld-Murley (Exhibitions Curator) Grizedale Arts / Adam Sutherland (Director)
MIMA / Dr. Laura Sillars (Director/Dean) & Dr. Claire Louise Staunton (Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow)
MK Gallery / Anthony Spira (Director)
Towner Eastbourne / Joe Hill (Director)
Judging panel: Alastair Sooke, Trustee, The Ampersand Foundation Clarrie Wallis, Director, Turner Contemporary Jack Kirkland, Chairman, The Ampersand Foundation Mark Wallinger, Artist Sam Thorne, Trustee, The Ampersand Foundation
Please note Turner Contemporary, as the winner of the 2023 Award, did not enter the 2025 edition of the Award.