Explore oceans, fireflies, memory, and more – as annual international exhibition prepares to open.
The Aesthetica Art Prize returns to York Art Gallery from tomorrow, Friday 17 July and will run until 15 November 2026.
Now in its 20th year, the Prize showcases incredible talent from contemporary artists around the globe across a range of mediums including digital media arts.
This year’s shortlisted artists address environment, identity, culture, and wellbeing as interconnected conditions of contemporary life.
Works by Felipe Castelblanco (Tunda: A Quantic Plant and the Devil’s Breath) and Claudia Behrensen (Sacred Bond) engage ecological crisis through speculative and historically embedded narratives.
Across contributions by Filip Haglund, Hope Strickland, Jarrett Murphy, Alexis Pichot, and Kazuaki Koseki, Liza Dracup, landscapes of forests, oceans, mountains, and fragile ecological systems are rendered as unstable and evolving forms.
The exhibition also extends into questions of memory, perception, and representation through works including DIVA’s Memoria 2020: When Memories Are No Longer Enough, Magid Magid’s Faith Amongst the Ruins, Edgar Martins’ explorations of mental health, Katharine Dowson’s A Window to a Future of an HIV Vaccine, Yasuaki Matsuura’s camera-based sculptures, Neville Gabie’s At Sea, Neil Armstrong’s The Tipping Point and Jeonghan Yun’s Photograph Drawing III.
Works by Tommy Goguely, Sara Campaci, Teti and Chrissy Lush challenge our perceptions through works that disrupt, fragment and sometimes even obstruct the act of viewing.
The shortlisted artists are competing for the Grand prize of £10,000 – and there’s also an Emerging Artist prize, which several of the artists qualify for, of £1,000.
“Aesthetica really encourages artists to respond to themes in contemporary life,” said Livia Turnbull, curator of Contemporary Art at York Art Gallery.
“Themes of climate change, the impacts of technology, especially AI, on our culture, as well as works related to identity politics and belonging.
“In particular, one that stands out to me is around climate crisis – but a lot of the artists who are approaching that theme this year are doing so in a way that they’re celebrating nature and they’re looking at nature as a place of solace that we can return to.
“We also have some really powerful works around these themes of belonging. One in particular that stands out to me is a submission by Magid Magid – who you may know as the former mayor of Sheffield. His work, which is a video and performance work, is where he returns to sites of Islamophobic attacks in the UK to pray at those sites.
“It’s a work about mourning and reclaiming those spaces and a gentler, quieter reflection on those violent attacks.”
The Aesthetica Art Prize opens at York Art Gallery on 17 July 2026 and will run until 15 November 2026, it is included in general admission.
Find out more at the York Art Gallery website.
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