20 Artists We Just Discovered That You’re Going to Love
Finding new artists is, genuinely, one of my favourite things about this job. Not the ones who've already been written about everywhere, or who've had the big institutional moment. The ones who are mid-practice, mid-thought, building something real - and who just haven't had enough eyes on them yet.
This is our first ever Discovery List: twenty artists from the wider Seen Mentor Prize submissions who stopped us in our tracks. They work across painting, photography, sculpture, textile, and installation. They're based across Europe, North America, and beyond. What they share isn't style or medium - it's a seriousness of intent and a clarity of vision that made us want to put their names somewhere people could find them.
Consider this a heads up. These are emerging artists worth knowing about now, before everyone else catches up.
-Carrie
Alan makes story worlds. Everything begins with an action followed by conflict – lots of conflict. Relationships change with every element, shape, and character.
Alina's practice emerges from the lived experience of war and its impact on individuals, communities, and the environment.
Leave a Light On for Me considers crisis as an ongoing condition, resisting fixed conclusions and remaining attentive to gestures of care, hope and reciprocity.
Claire’s paintings focus on the physical structures and cultural origins of gardens, and the plants that are given permission to grow there.
Hugh makes digitally manipulated photographs that deconstruct the semiotics of landscape photography.
Jackie’s sculptural relief paintings made from plaster, pigment, metal and patina explore human engagement with the natural world; the atmosphere and tactile sensations of unique environments.
Jamie’s ongoing body of painted self-portraits and still lifes gives a first person survivor’s account to create a deeply intimate encounter between artist, subject, and viewer.
Jennifer's work is a contemplative exploration of stillness, energy, and connection through abstract geometric watercolor
Krista’s work explores themes of displacement, cultural memory, resistance, and the lasting impact of political systems on people and place.
Kasia Dudkiewicz
Kasia’s practice is a conversation between fibre and self - a practice of reflection, resilience, and rediscovery.
Kate Rusek
Kate assembles highly tactile sculptures that transmute the themes of man-made environmental catastrophes, emotional landscapes, and ecological systems into lavish maximalism.
Kylie’s portrait based work explores how enduring histories live inside the body within relationships that hold historical violence, cultural entanglement, admiration and uncertainty.
Lisa’a practice is based on observation and translation: how people move, perform, relate to each other and become visible within a specific atmosphere.
Lucine explores tension, femininity, memory, and material transformation through hand torn nylon fibers applied to custom hook based surfaces.
Tracy’s work examines memory, perception, and subjectivity through image making, narrative, and installation.
Lucy’s feminist sculptures enters the discussion around body autonomy at a time of global rising male violence. Carving stone is an act of catharsis for her, giving sculptural form to trauma, anger, sexuality, recovery and resilience.
Marion’s work is rooted in the personal, using photography and painting to explore the intersections of mental health, memory, and the body.
Russ explores our relationship to our identity and experience through altering the rules of the surrounding space, using painting, performance and conceptual objects and installations to physically and psychologically influence participant behaviour.
Sarah paints lived experiences: familiar, imperfect, sometimes messy, and raw. Life as we know it, not as we pretend it to be.
Zsofia is interested in European history and how our responses to complex societal questions in the present shape the world for generations.