Winners of UK/raine competition announced

The Saatchi Gallery and Firtash Foundation have announced the winners of UK/raine, an open competition for emerging artists from the UK and Ukraine aged 18-35.

The overall winner of the competition was Ukrainian video artist Sergiy Petlyuk. He also took home the section prize for New Media.

The winners of the Installation and Street Art categories respectively were Ukrainian artists Roman Mikhaylov and Dima Mykytenko, while British artist Dominic Beattie won the Painting section, and Jamie Fitzpatrick, also from the UK, obtained the prize for Sculpture.

British sculpture artist Olivia Bax was the winner of a separate public vote.

The winners were announced at the exhibition’s launch and VIP private view in London last night. Each of the category winners received £10,000 (US$15,500) with the overall winner of the prize receiving a further £20,000 (US$31,000). The winner of the public vote received £5,000 (US$8,000) of production costs towards their work.

A shortlist of 30 artists will also have the opportunity to exhibit their work at the Saatchi Gallery for a month-long exhibition, running from 24 November 2015 to 3 January 2016.

The competition received over 10,000 entries from 2,100 artists.

UK/raine forms part of the Days of Ukraine in the UK festival and follows the success of Premonition: Ukrainian Art Now, which ran at the Saatchi Gallery from 9 October to 3 November 2014. A collaboration between the Saatchi Gallery and the Firtash Foundation, it was the only exhibition in the UK to feature in the world’s top 20 most attended shows in 2014.

See our selection of ten artists from the exhibition on the brink of big things.