For the ninth year running, Law firm Travers Smith displayed Westminster students’ artwork in London offices and offered them business and legal support. The students participated in the company’s award-winning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Art programme, a year-long series of events and activities aimed at supporting graduate artists from select universities, including Westminster.
The programme partnered with Serpentine to support the professional development of participating artists. Serpentine is one of the most successful and influential galleries in Europe and offers free admission to its year-round exhibition programme. The free contemporary art gallery in London’s Kensington Gardens shares the same values as Travers Smith of seeking to nurture emerging talent and engage diverse local audiences through art, architecture, design and education.
The scheme is run by Travers Smith and artworks are chosen by a committee of volunteers drawn from across the firm. The participating students work toward the CSR Art Award at the end of the programme and the winner is awarded £2,000 to support them with their transition towards professional practice. Runners up, who are awarded Highly Commended, receive cash prizes of £500. All other participants are paid a fee to display their work for one year, which is all for sale with the complete sale price going to the artist.
All of the artists’ work is displayed at Travers Smith’s main office building based in the city, located in their client and public meeting rooms, auditorium and reception.
Ten students from Fine Art Mixed Media BA Honours and Photography BA Honours at Westminster are taking part in the programme this year.
The winner of the Art Award in last year’s programme was Zerha Ocal, a Fine Art Mixed Media BA Honours student from the Harrow Campus, for her watercolour and acrylic painting series titled Untitled. The series’ focus is on the relationship between the space and blurred figuration which depicts abstract spaces that scrutinise aspects of human conditions. As an immigrant artist, she believes the complexities of the background are not a passive surface to hold merely the foreground, but how this interaction continues to affect and creates what happens in the foreground and in reverse.
One of the 2023 runners up for the Award is Photography BA Honours student Alexandros Charovas, whose work draws inspiration from Greek and Roman sculptures, the Renaissance era and surrealism. His project, titled Liberated Masculinity, challenges traditional representations of masculinity through a series of gender-fluid portraits. The project aims to celebrate individual expression and diversity, while creating a space to critically dissect the performance of culture and gender. It examines the ways in which photography has shaped the cultural performance of masculinity and the various narratives that have been associated with it. It seeks to encourage discussion about gender, and challenge problematic expressions that have perpetuated toxic masculinity and prevented men from fully expressing themselves.
Alexandros in front of one of his photographs at the Award ceremony
Photography BA Honours student Samuel Fath is another 2023 runner up who uses image making to explore the relationship between people and place and to document the impacts of sociopolitical issues. Born and raised in Cornwall, his project titled Nobody Home concerns the beauty of Cornwall that drives over four million people to visit annually but has created over 35,000 empty homes. Amidst a national housing crisis, countless families have been evicted to make way for more lucrative holiday lets. Cornwall is statistically the second poorest in Northern Europe, with nearly a third of children living in poverty. Yet, during the pandemic, over £170 million in grants were handed out to the owners of holiday lets in the area.
This year's panel of judges included Royal College of Art alumna and artist Susan Rocklin, Alexa Chow, Assistant Curator at Serpentine Galleries and Chris Kelly, London Head of Legal at Bloomberg. The programme is now entering its tenth year and the winner and runners up will be announced in May 2025.
To help Art school graduates with economic security and developing their employability, Travers Smith also offers commercial opportunities to some of the participating artists. These can range from corporate and event photography to developing and leading arts-based workshops for their own staff and partners.
Raine Smith, Course Leader of Fine Art Mixed Media BA Honours, said: “This initiative offers our graduating students a generous opportunity to transition into professional life as artists. The work this year straddles subjects which open our eyes to global cultural exchange alongside direct personal lived experiences. We hope that the chosen exhibited works not only allow the viewer to immerse themselves in new narratives but perhaps also provokes questions which touch upon the global and individual politics which are so prescient.”
This programme directly contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth and 17: Partnerships for the Goals. Since 2019, the University of Westminster has used the SDGs holistically to frame strategic decisions to help students and colleagues fulfil their potential and contribute to a more sustainable, equitable and healthier society.
Find out more about Art, Design and Visual Culture courses at Westminster.
