2025

Jemma Appleby

We are pleased to announce that the Helen Putler Art Prize for 2025 has been awarded to Jemma Appleby's with #1010525, a two-metre-tall sheet of paper containing 'a drawing still in progress'.

In the words of Geoff Dunlop, curator of SCREENPLAY which featured Appleby's artwork:

First impressions of Jemma Appleby’s exquisite work can be confusing. Are these photographs, prints or paintings? They are in fact charcoal drawings. And the more closely you study them the more puzzling the experience becomes. Are they buildings or pure geometry? Are they states of emotion or of mind? Or are they quite simply an evocation of the sublime - with just a tinge of menace?

Appleby describes spaces of tranquility, serenity, peace and even transformation, in her charcoal drawings of compelling beauty. The density of their deep blacks has the lustre of fur yet the granularity of coal dust. The subtlety of so many and varied greys can make you think of the many and varied words the Inuit have for snow.

Appleby's work has been selected by visitors to Fringe Arts Bath Festival 2025, as this year's recipient of the prize which was set up in memory of Helen Putler which was set up by some of her close friends "as a way of remembering our dear friend Helen Putler, who would always be at FaB opening nights and supported (and worked for) many of the independent institutions in the Arts in Bath."

Jemma's other exhibits at FaB 2025 were also chosen by our contributors ...

Honourable mentions for FaB 2025

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