London’s Royal Academy of Arts announces Charles Wollaston Award winner 2022

Royal Academy Arts art

Good news for independent and emerging artists as this year’s Royal Academy’s 254th Summer Exhibition and Charles Wollaston Award has a new winner!

Uta Kögelsberger took out the position for her video work, Cull, a 5-channel video installation that follows the gigantic task of the clear-up process after the devastating impact of bushfires. It charts the efforts of the teams responsible for cutting down the dead trees left standing, that are now endangering the remaining structures and roads. In a metaphor for the suspended sense of emergency we find ourselves in, each tree is documented as it comes crashing to the ground, seemingly out of nowhere, like dead carcasses, sometimes falling with such force that the earth beneath them shake.

Uta won the £25,000 prize for the Charles Wollaston Award, recognising ‘most distinguished work’ in the exhibition and is one of the most significant art prizes awarded in the UK.

For more and to pay it a visit, head to the Royal Academy of Arts website