With submissions for our 2025 Annual Exhibition NOW OPEN, we are delighted to share details of a new award: The NEAC Climate Emergency Prize with a judging panel that will include Chris Packham CBE, Emma Stibbon RA, Leon Morrocco RSA and Olwyn Bowey RA.
Patrick Cullen PNEAC tells us more about the award, how it came about, and why it's so important . . .
Why a Climate Emergency Prize at the NEAC?
"The NEAC (New English Art Club) has a long tradition of showing work related directly to the environment and the world around us. It was founded in 1885 partly as a consequence of the radical re-engagement with nature pioneered by the French Impressionists.
This history of plein air observation is still a major strand linking our members’ working practices. Although most of us may complete our artworks back in our studios, we firmly believe in the fundamental importance of drawing from nature. Often this takes the form of a profound engagement with the landscape and with our environment.
I am sure I am not the only landscape painter in this Society who has noticed the changes to that environment over the past twenty to forty years. Industrial farming practices, deforestation and global warming have all changed the look of our landscapes and crucially their biodiversity.
Therefore, with the support of our Patron King Charles III, we have sought and found sponsorship for a £2,000 Climate Emergency Prize and a £500 runner-up prize for the best two paintings in our 2025 Annual Exhibition addressing the climate crisis.
We use the words “emergency” and “crisis” advisedly. It is important to be honest with people. A few facts should suffice to make this clear:
1. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) over 97% of climate scientists now agree that global warming constitutes a very serious threat to humanity and is largely caused by manmade emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
2. According to the United Nations the world is currently on track for an average global temperature rise of between 2.5° and 2.9°C and that, unless we start reducing fossil fuel emissions rapidly, this will prove a conservative estimate. This estimate is way above our original relatively safe target of a 1.5°C rise as part of the Paris Agreement signed by all governments in 2016.
3. At the same time the latest analysis from NASA concludes that emissions from fossil fuel use continue to rise rather than fall. We are still moving in the opposite direction to the course we urgently need to be on.
4. Science-based predictions of what a 2.5 to 2.9°C rise would mean for the world vary from calamitous through to catastrophic. And for each added 0.1°C rise, the problem of preventing further cumulative rises due to tipping points being passed (let alone any hope of reversing such rises) becomes ever harder.
No one has all the answers to this problem, but we feel that instituting such a prize is one small way in which we can help to further raise public awareness of such a critical matter.
It also offers those brave artists who feel impelled to address these concerns through their art (it’s not exactly the most commercial direction to take) an opportunity to show their work and maybe even win an award."
Patrick Cullen PNEAC
THE JUDGING PANEL
Emma Stibbon RA is a British artist whose large-scale drawings and prints consider the complexities of extreme environments undergoing transition and change. Often working from remote locations, among them the polar regions, volcanic terrains, deserts and coastal environments, her approach is driven by her wish to understand how human activity and the forces of nature are shaping our surroundings. Her large scale drawings and prints record the beauty and precariousness of our planet.
Chris Packham CBE is a naturalist and wildlife campaigner.
"Life on Earth is in crisis. Climate breakdown, biodiversity loss. Pandemics not only threaten our species but everything that swims, slithers, slimes, flies... all living things. Mass extinctions have occurred before - this is different, this is a mass extermination. Our species is the driving force and we all know it. And I don't believe that we want that on our conscience, particularly as we have so many ways to ameliorate the worst of the impacts. We have the answers, the solutions, we still have hope. But we have to act, and act urgently, act now.
"Science measures the gravity of the issues... I believe that art needs to play a more prominent role in communicating the emergency. The honesty of art, its power to connect with people and stir powerful emotions is irrefutable. That's why I am very pleased to have been asked to help judge this brilliant new prize. Here is a great opportunity for artists to shout out or quietly stir humanity's hearts, an opportunity for art to make a difference."
Olwyn Bowey RA is a British artist whose work focuses on landscape and still-lifes. Bowey's love of the natural world means she often works outdoors, or in her greenhouse, which doubles as a studio.
"I still don’t think of myself as an artist. I always wanted to be a naturalist. I just wanted to be outside."
Leon Morrocco RSA is a Scottish artist based in London known for his vibrant paintings inspired by his travels.
"It is in the past five years that I have almost exclusively focused on [...] our natural surroundings, specifically in the mountains and hills of the Alpes-Maritimes behind the city of Nice. I am particularly excited by the physical characteristics of this region - crossed by lateral escarpments of white limestone, it is rugged and undomesticated landscape and for me impressive in its timeless monumentality."
Find out more (including instructions on how to submit, key dates, terms & conditions) on the Mall Galleries website.
