NEW GRADUATE AWARDS 2025
“It is with great pleasure that we announce this years recipients of the SSA New Graduate Award. This year, the council have been scouring the country’s degree shows in search of graduates whose work embodies both the spirit of Scottish Contemporary Art and the aims of the SSA.
The winners of the SSA New Graduate Award will be given the opportunity to showcase their work in our Annual Exhibition at the start of 2026 as well as two year’s free Graduate membership to the society; all this to ensure they are well on their journey of becoming Scotland’s next generation of contemporary artists.”
– Frank To, SSA Co-President.
The selected pieces will be on display at the SSA’s 127th Annual Exhibition which will be held at The Royal Scottish Academy, January – February 2026.
Annabelle Pelaez
Edinburgh College of Art
A developing appreciation of the microscopic gaze has empowered me to highlight the aesthetics of our natural surroundings through a less conventional lens. In so doing, I am inviting the viewer to contemplate those less obvious aspects of nature which are, arguably, often overlooked or under appreciated.
Simultaneously, the technology that enables us to consider an alternative, macro-perspective of landscape (and, by extension, the environment) reveals the unprecedented scale and impact of human activity on the planet. With this in mind, I aim to give prominence to environmental and climate-related issues that I consider are both inherent to and inseparable from the concept of landscape today.
This series of work encapsulates elements of both the micro- and macroscopic views alluded to, with the objective of discerning alternative views of landscape that shift the viewer’s gaze in both literal and figurative terms.
Image: Shrinking, Ink and brush pens on calico, 2025
Carlotta Mateus de Hildenbrand
Edinburgh College of Art
‘Make pretty colours and make it agreeable, and in that way make people look.’ Paula Rego, a famous Portuguese artist, once said this regarding how art can garner attention for the issues it speaks about. Art essentially necessitates a level of aestheticization of its subject to deal with certain matters. My practice is rooted in reframing anatomy and issues of consent and reproduction through this aestheticisation to heighten public awareness of feminist issues. I research sexual health concerns through books, online resources, and current cases. I work primarily in serialised sculptural mediums, intending to offer art to audiences in a more accessible manner.
My practice is fuelled by my life experiences and the growing issues of women’s rights. I remember the strange shame that filled me when boys in school would joke about how ugly our bodies were, that some of us looked ‘loose’ and ‘used up.’ Did I? Why did I look like this? Why couldn’t I look ‘normal’? Our bodies are not only being viewed through a misogynistic lens but often misunderstood by those who lashed out and even those who received these lashings. Hence, I use art as a medium for sexual education through a feminist scope.
Image: Pleasure, Power, Consent, Pewter, Jesmonite, 2025
Christopher Ivor Adam
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee
Across these islands, people have gathered to sing the age-old songs for centuries.
When they don’t sing, they might believe in God, or in the resurrection of a critically endangered language, or in the benefits of reiki for dogs. Indeed, human beings are lyrical creatures, and without the songs’ age-old wisdom, they’ll find another hymn sheet soon enough.
Fictions, whether sung from an ancient songbook or read in a crack newspaper, are exciting. They centre us in grand stories and give the land around us a hidden logic, however misguided. But beneath them lies something profoundly human: the desire to belong, to understand, to matter.
That people across these islands are flocking to conspiracy theories should come as no surprise; people have gathered to sing the age-old songs for centuries.
Or so I read.
Christopher Ivor Adam is a Paisley-born artist and composer who lives and works in Dundee. His artistic work spans drawing, painting, printmaking and filmmaking. He writes cryptic crosswords for The Times and The Financial Times under the name ‘Magnum’.
Air feadh nan eilean seo, chruinnicheadh daoine a ghabhail nan seann òran o chionn linntean.
Ged nach seinneadh iad, dh’fhaodadh iad creidsinn ann an Dia, no ann an aiseirigh cànain fo chunnart na h-èiginn, no ann am buannachdan reiki do na coin. Gu dearbha, ’s e creutairean fonnmhor a tha sa chinne-daonna, agus ged a rachadh seann ghliocas nan òran ud air chall, chan fhada gus an lorg iad laoidh eile ri ghabhail.
Tha uirsgeulan, ged a sheinnear iad à leabhar àrsaidh no a leughar iad ann an atach pàipeir-naidheachd, àrd-inntinneach. Cuiridh iad sinn an teis-meadhan nam mòr-sgeulan agus bheir iad brìgh dhìomhair don fhearann mun cuairt oirnn, mearachdach ’s gu bheil i. Tha rudeigin fòdhpa ge-tà luaidhte sna daoine: ’s e sin am miann a bhith a’ buntainn, a’ tuigsinn, ’s a’ dèanamh diofar.
Cha b’ iongnadh ged a tharraingeadh sgaoth de mhuinntir nan eilean seo gu teòiridhean mu chuilbheartan; chruinnicheadh daoine a ghabhail nan seann òran o chionn linntean.
Sin na leugh mise co-dhiù.
Rugadh Christopher Ivor Adam, a tha na fhear-ealain ’s na chumadair-ciùil, ann am Pàislig agus tha e a’ fuireach ’s ag obair ann an Dùn Dè. Tha an obair-ealain aige a’ sìneadh gu tarraing dhealbhan, peantadh, clò-bhualadh is filmeadaireachd. Bidh e a’
sgrìobhadh tòimhseachain cheilte airson The Times agus The Financial Times fon ainm ‘Magnum’.
Image: An Guth / The Voice, Still from Film (38mins) 2025
Claire Maria Carey
Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen
Women are trained to make ourselves smaller and passive for the comfort of men. We are trained to tolerate threatening behaviours and violent intent from birth. Victims of toxic relationships often remain unreactive around their partner to avoid triggering toxic cycles. They need to be neutral, even when it makes them uncomfortable to the point of it becoming painful. She suffers discomfort for her partner to remain content.
‘Always Threatened, Never Bitten’
This work symbolizes the constant threat of male violence and power that women live with daily. We are aware of the power that they can exert over us if they choose. We are painfully aware of what they want from us. We are so used to it that we barely flinch at misogynistic comments and lustful stares: a hint at what is going on beneath the surface of the male mind.
If she was bitten, she was probably showing too much skin. It was too tempting for the poor creature. The flesh looked so soft.
The threat is ever-present. Any woman can fall victim and be bitten. It only takes a moment.
Image: Always Threatened, Never Bitten, Still from Film, 2025
Codie Anne
UHI Inverness
Hello, my name is Codie Anne, and I am a contemporary artist who likes to try my hand at everything. I identify as a fine artist, a crocheter, an actor, dancer, circus performer, and all-round creative mess. I convince myself that if I can think it, I can do it, despite never having tried it before or knowing where to begin. I am self-taught in most practices and develop effective skills in unorthodox ways.
By practicing as a contemporary fibre artist, I have expanded my reach in challenging the art world on what should be considered “art” or “craft”. The inspiration to craft from a young age from my maternal figures allowed me to grow and develop their legacy with a modern and personalised twist.
When crocheting I design my own patterns to allow for the freedom and challenge that comes with experimentation. This can be high risk when working with yarn as the only way to fix a previous mistake or change the scale is to completely unravel the project.
This body of work challenges the high art perception of craft making disciplines. Craft is in its revolution, its concept is evolving, and the legacy continues.
Image: Sampler, Crocheted Yarn, 2025
Georgie Du Boulay
Glasgow School of Art
Georgie Du Boulay is an artist and writer working across painting, installation, and text. She graduated with First Class Honours in Painting and Printmaking from the Glasgow School of Art in 2025 and will complete an MA in Writing at the Royal College of Art in 2026.
Her practice explores the imaginative and ontological capacities of image and language. Influenced by materialist philosophy and the mythopoetic, she works with quiet surfaces – layered, dry-brushed, and softened through bleach and residue. A recurring yellow functions as a sign-system or incantation, while light acts as an agent of flight, interference, and world-making.
At the heart of her work is the Bedland – a term she uses to describe a fictional, theoretical mode through which her practice makes and thinks. Neither purely imagined nor strictly material, the Bedland offers a generative way of working: a means of composing, fabulating, and engaging with relations between the symbolic and the sensory, or the real and the unreal.
Through both painting and writing, she treats work as a threshold – where surface, language, and attention are held in ongoing, speculative exchange. Du Boulay is currently developing this approach into a sustained, long-form model of imaginative research, considering fabulation-as-method.
Image: Nest Box, Wood, canvas, bleach, aluminum, LED bulb., 2025
Janice McCormack
UHI, Moray School of Art
Jan McCormack’s work is influenced by her personal experiences within the domestic space and her support work in education. She is fascinated by human interactions and relationships and her practice examines these interactions by taking a process-led multimedia approach. This is founded upon a developmental drawing practice which explores the tiny, nuanced movements of gesture and expression that reveal our vulnerabilities and insecurities. These drawings ignite a process for making abstract paintings, collages and sculptures. Through the playful manipulation of materials and repurposing of found objects she explores tensions around connect and disconnect, and freedom and controls. This provides an arena to make installations that retell stories of people caught within these systems and act as reflections for her own caring and life experiences. Inspired by artists Cathy Wilkes, Charlie Prodger and Mike Kelley, her work is a reminder of the invisible societal structures that insidiously seek to shape our lives. Living in the shadow of covid, with an increasing reliance on the virtual space, making installations that promote the importance of human connectivity has become an integral part of her practice. As writer Zadie Smith suggests, “It is important now more than ever to fight against the dehumanisation of humans.”
Image: Invisible Structures, Acrylic Paint, tape, wood, bed struts from New Start Homeless Enterprise, 2025
Keira Cormack
Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen
My work highlights the struggles and complex emotions surrounding my Russian heritage. Through research in themes of migration, language and nostalgia I’ve found objects hold our memories that bring both connection and distance, as they serve as a reminder of home but also of how far away from home you are now.
The Russian doll holds multiple stories for me, layers of my identity, the symbol of Mother Russia herself in the form of a souvenir. For some she is strong yet for me she is fragile as porcelain, as tearable as paper. The wests view on Eastern Europe has led to further distance from Mother Land, the discrimination and the shame I bare has led me to destroy mother, break away to fit into my father’s Scottish mould.
Yet as I break, I become free,
As I surround myself in the Russian language, I ease the grief of forgetting my mother tongue and the melancholic symptoms of nostalgia for an imagined home.
Image: Walk Over Me, Still from Film, 2025.
Millie Stewart
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee
My practice explores the juxtaposition of safety and violence, childhood and adulthood. I find the complexities of human experience and our relationship with the world around us fascinating. By blending materials like wood, ceramic, textile and metal I’m able to bring these opposing forces into physical form, which creates a unique and intense emotional experience for the viewer. The tactile nature of my work invites people to physically interact with it. It allows for a more visceral connection to the concepts I’m exploring—bringing the viewer back to that childlike state of curiosity and exploration. The idea of bridging the gap between innocence and violence is interesting to me as it opens up dialogue about how we perceive danger and safety as we move through different stages of life.
Image: Soft Imps, Textiles & Ceramic, 2025
Tally Tunnell
Glasgow School of Art
Through an engaged, iterative process of mapping, collecting, musing, and remapping, my practice seeks to question and reframe how relational space interacts with physical space, drawing upon the experiences of both human and non-human entities.
By using the method and guise of this ‘mapping’, my practice encompasses a personal process of searching for and documenting such spaces in which these entities messily intersect and entangle, and where reflections are cast. Finding and containing bodies within these landscapes that often propose contradictory understandings of my own place within these larger systems, and exploring how we can thoughtfully navigate our role in both supporting and transforming non-human environments. My work grapples with the inherent tensions in how we shape and are shaped by our environment, finding and layering both conversation and contention within invisible frameworks of human control.