Current Winner
Bea Haines MRSS
Bea Haines MRSS' work often appropriates and manipulates unorthodox materials including dust, human ash, lime scale, snail slime, chewing gum and blood. Transient, taboo or everyday detritus becomes the focus of intense scrutiny or worship. Mundane objects are raised to the status of relics or changed beyond recognition. In this way banal or discarded items are granted a second life. Bea aims to shine a light on the small traces of life that are deeply poignant or represent momentous life events such as birth, love, sickness and death.
Bea's second child was born unexpectedly on the way to hospital in the passenger seat of her old Honda Jazz surrounded by toys, half eaten snacks and other detritus. In recent years she has been using the everyday materials of family life to reflect on her experience of motherhood.
Bea’s First Plinth sculpture will use reclaimed air bags and her own car to produce an impactful artwork that both celebrates and challenges cars as protective vessels of opportunity, and components of global warming.
