The Winner of the BBC TV Contest

The TV contest for young artists organised by the Charles Saatchi Gallery in London was won by a 20-year-old Eugenie Scrase from a British city Buckingham. Her artwork is displayed in the State Hermitage at the exhibition Newspeak: British Art Now (from October 24, 2009 till January 17, 2009). The exhibition organised by the State Hermitage in cooperation with the Saatchi Gallery and with assistance of London Friends of the Hermitage presents 50 works by young British artists, part of whom immigrated to Great Britain from different countries during the past few years. Most of them are not known to the world artistic circles.

The exhibition is held within the framework of the Hermitage 20/21 project that is a large-scale programme on expanding the collection of Western European art of the 20th and 21st centuries, the project is designed to present the works by contemporary Western artists in the Hermitage.

The work by Eugenie Scrase Trunkated Trunk represents a piece of a tree trunk on a crooked fence. Scrase found a tree that fell on a metal fence in east London. She asked the owner of the house if she could have the piece of the trunk as well as the damaged section of the fence.

The School of Saatchi was created by the Saatchi Gallery, it is a project aimed to discover new talented British artists. In Autumn, 2009 the BBC channel featured a TV documentary series about the School and the idea of beauty in the contemporary art.

In the Saatchi School following a selection process six finalists received an opportunity to perfect their skills under the supervision of the leading British artists in an art school established especially for them. The work of the winner, Eugenie Scrase, selected by the Saatchi Gallery, the artists Tracey Emin and Matthew Collings, broadcaster, art critic and Frank Cohen and Kate Bush, Head of the Art Department of the Barbican Gallery is exhibited in the State Hermitage at the exhibition Newspeak: British Art Now.

As a grant the winner has also received a free studio for 3 years in Chelsea provided by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in partnership with the Saatchi Gallery.

Upon the closing of the exhibition in the State Hermitage, an expanded version of this exhibition will open at the Saatchi Gallery in London (from summer 2010 till January 2011).

Trunkated Trunk
Work by Eugenie Scrase, the Winner of the BBC TV Contest
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