YCA Winner Goes To China

22 year-old Sasha Hughes-Stanton (pictured) was selected from nearly 100 finalists to win this year’s amazing UK Young Artists prize at the Young Creative Awards – a two week funded residency working with an international group of young artists on Chongming Island, Shanghai, China.

National arts charity UK Young Artists awarded this special prize to one young creative whose work they felt demonstrated originality and a commitment to their practice. Sasha – who also won the YCA in Design & Architecture, and who recently graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a First Class Honours degree in Textile Design – was the winner.

We are delighted that Sasha has written to tell us about her experience:

“At the beginning of September for two weeks I participated in ARTSHAKE19 where 16 young artists from the UK, China and South Korea were given the opportunity to work in a fluid and open way, creating work which responded to the theme of ‘Nature and Light’. The site we worked on was a derelict abandoned factory on Chongming Island, which is located on the estuary of Yangtze River and is one of the largest islands in China.

“During the stay I took part in group discussions, presentations and gained mentor guidance. For my design project I used found materials from the site which included: drain pipes, roofing, rope, metal and rubber curtains. The materials were the main focus of the project, creating a range of textures, forms and colour compositions, which could develop and integrate with the original structure of the building.

“I bought and used aluminium from a supplier in the local town, this was much more accessible and I very much enjoyed communicating and sharing my ideas with them. I attached strip bar lighting within the compositions on the walls, creating a more modern and architectural element to the old found materials from the site.

“This project was extremely challenging and exciting, having the freedom and time to create large scale work in a derelict but beautiful environment with such history to it. Thank you very much for awarding me this prize, I truly enjoyed it.”

Michelle Bowen, Director of UK Young Artists, added “UKYA loved the way that Sasha embraced this amazing and unique experience, and that we were able to give her the opportunity to gather with so many other artists and influencers. She developed her work into a much larger scale and tested out new ideas directly on site. We see a very positive future ahead for Sasha and look forward to working with her again.”