Dartford local was selected from 1,400 entries for his work titled “Questions of our Day”

Dartford artist Habib Hajallie has been named the winner of the Robert Walters Group UK New Artist of the Year Award, at an awards ceremony held at the prestigious Saatchi Gallery, for his work titled “Questions of our Day.”

Habib was the recipient of the £10,000 cash prize – selected from 1,400 entries - and chosen ahead of the other nine shortlisted artists for work submitted within the brief of ‘The Unimagined Future’. The prize is organised by Robert Walters Group and national arts charity UK New Artists .

Habib wowed the judges with his intricately detailed figures realised on the pages of antique Sierra Leonean texts for his winning piece. Habib’s practice is informed by his Sierra Leonean and Lebanese heritage, in the representation of figures that have been left-out of traditional British Portraiture he works to investigate how identity can be reconstructed by historical oppression.

His canvases of antique texts and maps ‘recontextualise these figures to confront the enduring ethnocentrisms still embedded within modern western society’.

Using a modern ballpoint pen depicting the empowered subjects, whose likeness is inspired by himself and his family, Habib constructs links in ink between past, present and future.

The winning piece of work will be on display at the Robert Walters Group head office in Covent Garden for 12 months. The digital gallery showcasing all the shortlisted artist’s works along with an online voting poll for users to vote for their favourites is now live. Votes for the Peoples Choice Award will close on the 10 January 2023, with the winner announced on Thursday 12 January.

Habib said: “As a young artist from an ethnically diverse background, being recognised for an art prize that is intended to showcase the work of new British art being made today, is something that I hope will resonate with people from similar backgrounds as myself. For too long the work of Black British artists went unseen or under-appreciated, I have to thank the generations of immensely driven and talented Black British artists that paved the way to allow people such as myself opportunities for greater visibility to challenge archaic and oppressive notions of what it means to British. I can’t think of any organisations that champion emerging artists, in the way that UKNA does. They consistently provide an array of opportunities to catalyse the careers of up-and-coming artists.”

**Habib Hajallie - photo by Tom Morley**

The awards ceremony took place on Thursday 10th November at the Saatchi Gallery, and was curated by Garth Gratrix, an internationally exhibiting artist, Clore visual arts fellow, curator and studio director based in the North West of England. Judges included Paul Foster – Director of Saatchi Gallery; Michelle Bowen - Director of UK New Artists; Lisa Gee – longstanding Director of the Harley Foundation Charitable Trust; Saad Eddine Said – internationally-acclaimed curator and Artistic Director and CEO of New Art Exchange; Won Hee Nam - CEO of Art Lab N3 and Gallery N&K based in Seoul, South Korea; and Anne von Freyburg - artist and winner of the 2021 UK New Artist of the Year award.