Dates: 27 November 2026 – 12 February 2027
Location: TheGallery, AUB Campus
TheGallery at Arts University Bournemouth (AUB), in partnership with Technical Services, is proud to present the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2026, an internationally renowned exhibition celebrating excellence and innovation in contemporary drawing, as the opening exhibition of TheGallery's 2026–27 Exhibition Programme.
AUB and TheGallery have enjoyed a longstanding relationship with the Drawing Prize exhibition, first hosting the show in 2005. With the presentation of the 2026 touring exhibition, TheGallery will have hosted the Drawing Prize on eight occasions, reflecting its continued commitment to supporting, championing, and showcasing contemporary drawing practice.
Featuring outstanding works selected from submissions across the UK and internationally, the exhibition offers audiences a unique opportunity to engage with the breadth, diversity, and vitality of contemporary drawing today.
About the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize
Recognised as the UK's leading annual open exhibition dedicated to drawing, the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize celebrates excellence in contemporary drawing and provides a platform for emerging, mid-career and established artists to exhibit alongside some of the most accomplished practitioners working today.
Led by its founding director, Professor Anita Taylor, and supported by the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust, the exhibition is selected from thousands of submissions by artists and drawing practitioners from across the UK and around the world. Renowned for the quality and diversity of the work presented, the exhibition offers a compelling insight into current drawing practice, encompassing a broad range of approaches, materials and ideas.
Founded in 1994 by Anita Taylor and Paul Thomas as the Rexel Derwent Open Drawing Exhibition, the exhibition has evolved through several significant phases. It was known as the Cheltenham Open Drawing Exhibition from 1996 to 2000, before becoming the Jerwood Drawing Prize from 2001 to 2017. Since 2018, the exhibition has been supported by the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust and presented as the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize.
The exhibition has established an international reputation for championing drawing as a vital and dynamic form of contemporary artistic practice. Following its launch in London, it tours venues across the UK, bringing outstanding examples of contemporary drawing to audiences nationwide.
The AUB exhibition hang has been curated by Violet M. McClean since 2025. As part of her curatorial approach, she's invited guest curators to contribute to the exhibition hang programme, providing opportunities for individuals at the beginning of their curatorial careers to gain practical experience within a professional gallery setting.
Through this initiative, she's mentored graduates and emerging curators, creating opportunities for professional development and supporting the cultivation of new voices and perspectives within contemporary curatorial practice.
This exhibition presents a selection of works from the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2026, offering visitors the opportunity to experience the innovation, technical accomplishment and diversity that characterise contemporary drawing practice today.
Meet the AUB curator
MA
Partnerships and collaboration at AUB
The Drawing Studio was designed and completed by renowned architect, AUB alumnus and Honorary Fellow, Professor Sir Peter Cook RA and his office CRAB (Cook Robotham Architectural Bureau).
Not only is it the first purpose-built drawing studio to be constructed at an art school for more than a century, but also Sir Peter’s first building to be built in the UK.
This studio celebrates light and provides a space to enable drawing as a focused creative activity. The situation of the structure upholds the four light-central themes in looking and drawing by the inclusion of; a principle north light in the studio tradition, a rear clerestory that throws a softer light back from the rear wall, a discrete and even gentler light that filters from beneath a bench on the east side and, finally, a graded wash of light that travels along the curve of the entrance door.
This studio underlines the fundamental importance of drawing to the education offered at AUB.
The Drawing Studio was officially opened on 3 March 2016 by the late Dame Zaha Hadid, who closed her speech saying, “I simply love this building.”
Drawing is positioned at the very heart of contemporary creative practice, and is taught at AUB as an extension of thinking. Throughout our lives, we're all mark-makers of one kind or another, and drawing is an essential and fundamental form of our need to communicate. AUB celebrates its diversity; from its capacity for directness of expression, conceptualising ideas through algorithms and data structures, mechanical evocations, to exploring Eastern influences, topographies, the behaviour and properties of materials, sound and light, to analogous and metaphorical narratives.
It exists equally as an autonomous and self-contained discipline with its own histories, theories and practices, as well as being positioned perfectly to explore the blurring of boundaries across disciplines. Contemporary drawing is concerned with the ways in which we relate as human beings to each other, to our environment, communicating and investigating the political, cultural, and historical, and our psychological and physiological selves.
Drawing can be hand-made, manufactured or digital. It can be sculptural, physical, exist in real space or on a screen, it can be sewn or worn, it can move, it can be projected, it can exist on the body, the possibilities are limitless. However, what it must do is challenge and interrogate preconceived ideas, notions and traditions. It should make you think and question the world we live in.
- Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust: Supports Trinity Buoy Wharf as a creative arts hub, funding and promoting cultural activity in London.
- Drawing Projects UK/Professor Anita Taylor: Promotes drawing and contemporary art through exhibitions, research, publications, and public engagement, including the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize.
- The Big Draw: An arts education charity that celebrates drawing as a tool for creativity, learning, wellbeing, and social engagement.
- The Evelyn Williams Trust: Supports artists through awards, exhibitions, and opportunities that promote the importance of drawing in contemporary art.
- Parker Harris: A visual arts consultancy managing contemporary art projects and supporting the delivery of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize.
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2026 – formal opening and private view
Join us at TheGallery, Arts University Bournemouth for the formal opening and private view of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2026.
