Gilbert Bayes Award Winners 2025 Exhibition

TM Gallery in collaboration with the Royal Society of Sculptors, is delighted to present the Gilbert Bayes Award Winners exhibition 2025, an annual award established in 2020 by The Royal Society of Sculptors to help recognise and support outstanding early career sculptors.

Selected by the sculptor members of the Royal Society’s Board and an invited guest judge, the award provides vital support during what can be a difficult transition from study to professional practice. Generously supported by the Gilbert Bayes Charitable Trust, the award is open to sculptors of any age or nationality, with or without formal training and working in any style of media.

The guest judge and curator for the Gilbert Bayes Award 2025 is Freeny Yianni, curator and owner of the prestigious CLOSE Gallery in Somerset. The Gilbert Bayes Award Winners Exhibition at TM Gallery will bring together new work by ten, early career artists, offering a compelling snapshot of contemporary sculptural practice in the UK today.

Award winners received a year’s worth of professional development (including talks from guest speakers working in commercial galleries, art charities and private collections), a free year’s membership of the Royal Society of Sculptors and inclusion in a group exhibition. Award recipients will also have the chance to apply for member-only opportunities as well as a residency based at Benson Sedgwick Engineering Ltd, a metal fabricator in East London.

Participating artists:

Amanda Cornish
Amanda Cornish is a London-based multidisciplinary artist who graduated from The Royal College of Art with an MA in Sculpture (2024). She is one of the recipients of the Gilbert Bayes Award 2025.

Beverley Duckworth
Working with living sculpture and installation, Beverley Duckworth’s practice centres on the afterlife of the discarded and is rooted in small acts of reparation – sewing scraps together, watering fragile seedlings and nurturing the regenerative power of composting from waste materials.

Bo-Yi Wu
Boyi (b. 1998) is a London-based artist exploring the tensions between nature, technology, and human control. He works with invasive plants, transforming their fibers into handmade paper, wallpaper, and sculptures, merging traditional crafts with contemporary ecological dialogues.

Emmanuel Awuni
Emmanuel Awuni is a Ghanaian-British artist whose work mobilises oral traditions such as hip-hop, jazz, and Afrobeats to challenge systems of power and oppression. His interdisciplinary practice critiques the forces of incarceration and disempowerment, drawing parallels with the cultural mechanisms embedded in museums.

Lucy Mulholland
Lucy Mulholland (b.1999) is an Artist based in N.Ireland who studied Sculpture at the Edinburgh College of Art. Interested in the role Art has in exploring possible post-anthropocentric futures, her practice playfully investigates connections and exchanges between humans and other species in nature.

Madeleine Ruggi
Madeleine Ruggi (b.1991) is an artist based in London who completed her MFA at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam in 2022. Her work in sculpture, sound, print and installation considers the vast infrastructures of trade that sprawl across the globe and yet often remain largely unseen by everyday consumers.

Regan Boyce
Regan Boyce is a London-based multidisciplinary artist working with sculpture, print and installation. His work focuses on narratives around the biosphere through abstract constructions in metal, light and ink, as well as subjects like consumerism through installations such as “Consume”.

Salvatore Pioni
Salvatore Pione (b. 1995, Messina, Sicily) is a multidisciplinary artist who creates works that engages with themes of grotesque theatricality, camp, and remembrance. Pioni lives and works between London and Sicily.

Stephen Burke
Stephen Burke is an Irish artist and curator. He holds an MA in painting from the Glasgow School of Art (2018) Stephen’s work examines how cities are designed and how people interact with them. He explores the impact of urban development and increasing restrictions on public space, questioning whether these spaces remain truly public.

Yidan Kim
Yidan Kim is an artist who uses olfactory materials to create sculptures, installations, and performances. She focuses on the sense of smell, exploring the boundaries between human and non-human entities, and seeks to expand sensory perception beyond the human-centric perspective.

The Gilbert Bayes Award for early career sculptors is given annually by The Royal Society of Sculptors to a small group of outstandingly talented sculptors.