New Welsh art awards announced

Jon Gower

New awards for younger and emerging artists in Wales have been announced by the Contemporary Art Society for Wales (CASW).

Cardiff School of Art and Design postgraduate, Amber Mottram, received the CASW Student Award for a postgraduate student studying in Wales, sculptor Manon Awst won CASW’s Hibbard Prize and Lesley James received the CASW National Eisteddfod Purchase Prize.

The Contemporary Art Society for Wales has been supporting art and artists in Wales since it was founded in 1937, when Sir Cedric Morris and Augustus John were among its founding figures.

CASW has been making annual awards to support student and emerging artists for more than twenty years but the Hibbard Prize, in memory of Professor Bryan and Dr Elizabeth Hibbard, has only just been introduced.

CASW Student Award 2025, Amber Mottram

CASW’s selector for this year’s student award was art historian and writer, Rosie Clement Hennion. She was very struck by the way Amber worked with different media to reflect on her own domestic environment.

As Amber herself has said, her recent work aims to combine film, sculpture and writing as a way of documenting and exploring domestic space.

She has exploited the ‘paraphernalia’ of her domestic environment partly as a response to motherhood.

Clothes pegs became a recurring motif in her work and enabled her to experiment with scale and repetition as a way of freeing the objects aesthetically from their original function.

Amber completed her BA in Fine Art at the former University of Wales Institute Cardiff (UWIC) in 2011 and has recently completed a part-time MFA at Cardiff School of Art and Design within Cardiff’s Metropolitan University. Between her two degrees, she has held several exhibitions and co-founded The Boat Studio in Cardiff.

Amber is aiming to use the award to finance her next project, a continuation of her exploration of domestic space. She shared: “I am very grateful to receive this award.

The award money will enable me to purchase material and equipment for my next project, where I want to explore mapping projected film footage onto various objects taken from my domestic environment.”

CASW’s Hibbard Prize 2025, Manon Awst

Caernarfon-based sculptor Manon Awst was the recipient of this year’s Hibbard Prize. The prize, in its second year, is for a site-specific sculpture at Plas Glyn-y-Weddw Arts Centre in Llanbedrog, north Wales, to be installed in early 2026. Manon’s interest in geology and land structures guides her innovative use of sculptural materials. Her sculptures and site-specific artworks are rooted in ecological concerns. Her work explores how materials transform locations and communities, focusing on the tension between human and non-human structures.

CASW worked closely with Gwyn Jones, director of the North Wales arts centre, Plas Glyn-y-Weddw, in organising the award for this year’s prize. The contemporary sculptors Ann Catrin Evans and Junko Mori were invited to act as selectors for the prize and they unanimously chose Manon Awst from a number of contenders.

Manon has enthusiastically responded to the opportunity the prize offers her. “I’m delighted about this opportunity to create a new sculpture for Oriel Plas Glyn-y-Weddw through the CASW Hibbard Prize. This venue means a lot to me, since I’ve been visiting exhibitions here since childhood, and the outdoor ‘Sculpture Station’ is a perfect space to develop a playful, site-specific piece. I’m excited to work on it over the next six months and visiting regularly to see how the seasons shape the site.”

Manon studied Architecture at the University of Cambridge and subsequently completed research at the Royal College of Art, London. Her recent Future Wales Fellowship allowed her to focus on the ecological and cultural value of peatlands. This summer, a Henry Moore Institute Research Fellowship, is supporting her project “Peat in Practice,” during which she will be based at the Henry Moore Foundation’s Sculpture Research Library and specific areas of the Great North Bog. Additionally, in July 2025, Manon was selected to represent Wales at the 2026 Venice Biennale.

The Hibbard Prize was created in 2024 for emerging and early career artists following a very generous bequest from former CASW President Professor Bryan Hibbard (1926-2021) and his wife Dr Elizabeth Hibbard (1928-2021), both long-time supporters of the society. Current CASW President, Dr Peter Wakelin, said: ‘Bryan and Elizabeth were great supporters of contemporary art in Wales and loved to help people in their careers. Manon Awst is deservedly receiving a lot of attention and we’re delighted that the CASW award is playing a part in her current transition from emerging artist to leading name in Welsh art.’

CASW National Eisteddfod Purchase Prize, 2025, Lesley James

This year’s Eisteddfod purchase prize was awarded to North Wales-based Lesley James. The award was made in conjunction with Wrexham’s art centre, Tŷ Pawb, and selected by Wrexham’s Heritage Services Interim Museum and Collections Manager, Karen Murdoch.

Lesley James’ Darn bach o’r Cefn I (A Little Piece of the Cefn, 2025) pays tribute to the high-quality terracotta bricks manufactured by JC Edwards, formerly based in Wrexham. The exceptional Etruria Marl clay dug from pits around Wrexham were used in such buildings as the Victoria Law courts in Birmingham, the Victoria building Liverpool University, the Pier Head in Cardiff, and The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. JC Edwards’ tile and brickworks was demolished between the 1950s and 70s. Lesley explains: “I made rubbings from these major architectural buildings together with the remnants of the buildings left from the brickworks in Wrexham and incorporated them into my graphite and acrylic paper work.” The lightbox work, Darn bach o’r Cefn I, attempts to repatriate this fine legacy by bringing the artistry back to its home in Wrexham. Lesley James wanted to raise the profile in the city of the people who made the tiles and bricks as well as JC Edwards’ manufacturing works.

Lesley’s recent work focuses on large paper and graphite drawings that can then become sculptures. They are virtually impossible to recreate, taking on new form and response to each new environment that houses them.

Originally from Cornwall, Lesley James lives and works in North Wales. She studied at Falmouth School of Art which led to her completing a BA (Hons) in photography, at Manchester Polytechnic, before studying further at Liverpool John Moores for her MA in Fine Art. She has held numerous exhibitions and residencies since the early 2000s following her first prize in the North Wales Open in 2002 and later, the Tŷ Pawb Open in 2018. In 2022, she held a residency in Cill Rialaig, South West Ireland and in 2023, was commissioned to create new work for solo show at Galeri Caernarfon. CASW’s Eisteddfod Purchase prize follows in the wake of her commission to produce work for Tales from Terracottapolis at Tŷ Pawb.

Comment from CASW Chair, Rowland Davies said: “These awards reflect CASW’s continued commitment to the development of contemporary art in Wales. Each artist is entirely deserving of their award, which recognises the quality of their work and their dedication to their profession.”