Clifford Chance

Stephen Coppel awards the Clifford Chance Printmaking Purchase Prize 2022 to Evangeline Morris

Now in its 26th consecutive year, Clifford Chance's annual Postgraduate Printmaking Purchase Prize is awarded to the best printmaker completing their MA studies at a London art college in 2022. Worth £2,000 to the winner, it is now established as the premier prize on offer to the UK's postgraduate printmakers.

The annual Prize is selected by a leading figure in the print world, and this year Stephen Coppel, Assistant Keeper, Head of Contemporary and Modern Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, selected Evangeline Morris from Camberwell College of Arts as the winner of Clifford Chance's Purchase Prize 2022.

Evangeline Morris said "It is an honour to have been awarded such a prestigious prize, particularly when the standard of my fellow graduates was so high. I am so proud that my work will be held in a fantastic collection of contemporary print alongside such esteemed artists and printmakers. The Clifford Chance Purchase prize will allow me the opportunity to spend some time immediately after completing my degree establishing my practice and studio, ready for me to continue my research into contemporary landscape. I am so grateful I have been afforded this incredible opportunity."

Stephen praised the nine talented artists (in the exhibition) who were all dedicated to the printmaking, giving new voice to an old technique, but singled out 'the quite extraordinary evocation of landscape and memory in Evangeline's etchings' as his Prize-winner. In the artist's words 'Through rediscovery of place in our modern situation, I consider my own place in, and interactions with landscape. In experiencing these places, through walking, drawing and writing as research, I begin to know them and that which is unique to them.'

Keith Salway, a former General Manager of Clifford Chance, explained the reasons for initiating the Clifford Chance Postgraduate Printmakers exhibition and Purchase Prize: "We wanted to encourage new work and so 26 years ago we started our annual young printmakers’ purchase prize. This growing new body of work has come over the years to weave a vital imaginative strand into the daily life of the firm. At a time when all the arts are under such dire pressure. It is heart-warming to celebrate the skills we see in the 2022 exhibition. Grateful thanks go to the firm for generously sustaining this award."