Artist Otis Chetwynd-Woods wins the Helen Putler Arts Prize 2024
We’re excited to announce that Otis Chetwynd-Woods has been awarded this year’s Helen Putler Arts Prize, with his artwork “Pyckys rag Balweyth” and 384 Seams.
“This Is fantastic news, to have won the Helen Putler Arts Prize. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing all that interacted with the piece, and its once stationary being come to life, through the wonderful visitors.
And to hear that it has won an award makes me more proud and thrilled of what the artwork has developed.”
Otis Chetwynd-Woods
Otis Chetwynd-Woods
“Pyckys rag Balweyth” and 384 Seams
Performative Installation
Steel, Wood, Found Apparatus
Otis’ work consists primarily of Installation, with hints of sculpture and performance. This practice includes the relevance of decay and design. But through a lens of anti-consumerism and reusing materials and often creating out of pre-existing paraphernalia made with previous hands with relevance and reference to various industries, from mining to music.
Sound plays an important role in Otis' work as it allows his installation to envelop and come alive in the spaces allocated to them with the aid of performative interaction.
Otis' research spans from ancient to contemporary, often combining the fields of varied and contrasting interests that grasp his attention.
Discover more about Otis and his work:
instagram @otiscw_
youtube.com/@OChetwyndWoods
Curator Nia Manoylo (Oni/ih studio) selected Otis as one of the artists to exhibit in her exhibition Wilderness Commons, inviting visitors to explore the role of rituals in imagining alternative ecologies and the evolving relationship between humanity and nature, envisioning flora, fauna, and landscapes as living beings.
Discover more here: fringeartsbath.co.uk/wilderness
About the Helen Putler Arts Prize
As a way of remembering our dear friend Helen Putler, who would always be at FaB opening nights and supported (and worked for) many of the independent institutions in the Arts in Bath, the Helen Putler Arts Prize was started in 2022 as a way to help support an artist involved in a FaB Festival exhibition or project.
The idea is simple: anybody who wanted to get involved and make a make a small donation to the prize pot, would then choose their three favourite artists from the FaB Festival shows and the artist with the most votes would take the pot!
For the FaB Festival 2024, 13 people got involved in the Helen Putler Arts Prize and votes were cast for 13 different artists with the winner being Otis Chetwynd Woods "‘Pyckys rag Balweyth” and 384 Seams, congratulations to Otis!
Huge congratulations to the other 12 artists who also received votes (out of 200+ artists exhibiting at FaB Festival 2024), as follows:
Catherine January
Ellen Tovey
Em Whiteford
Freya Gill
Holly Searle
Juliet Duckworth
Lola Bennett
Mary Modha
Sonya Williams
Sophie Condie-Gardner
Steve Chandler
Vicky Vatcher
Visit the website, The Helen Putler Arts Prize for more information about how it all works and details of winners, past and present