Aesthetica Art Prize celebrates twentieth year with new exhibition at York Art Gallery

The Aesthetica Art Prize is returning to York Art Gallery in time for summer 2026.

The Prize, now in its twentieth year, showcases incredible talent from contemporary artists around the globe.

Working across a range of mediums including digital media arts, the Prize supports York’s status as a UNESCO Media Arts City and bolsters the creative industries that already exist within the historic city

Short-listed artists will go on display upstairs at York Art Gallery, from 17 July 2026 to 15 November 2026. The mixed media approach will create a visually striking display that will sit alongside the other range of exhibitions currently on show at York Art Gallery. 

This year’s themes include the environment and our relationship to it both past and present, global identities and culture as well as health and wellbeing in the modern age. Some works mesh a combination of these themes together such as Felipe Castelblanco’s ‘Tunda: A Quantic Plant and the Devil’s Breath,’ which explores the development of human relationships with the natural world and its longstanding entanglement with colonialism.

‘Sacred Bond’ by Claudia Behrensen follows a similar theme but instead looks to the future, by portraying the link between people and the natural world through powerful imagery of a dystopian world if nature continues to be neglected in favour of artificial entertainment. 

Other works from Filip Haglund, Hope Strickland, Jarrett Murphy and Alexis Pichot also navigate themes of the natural world. Pichot and Murphy use photography and prints to capture forests and mountains, whilst Haglund and Strickland portray their explorations of the ocean and rivers through film.

Kazuaki Koseki captures Himebotaru fireflies, a species unique to Japan, in an illuminated scene highlighting the beauty of the fireflies with the fragility of nature.

DIVA’s ‘Memoria 2020: When Memories Are No Longer Enough’, and Magid Magid’s ‘Faith Amongst the Ruins’ look at identity, race and cultural memory in the community, whilst Edgar Martins’ prints make a poignant comment on mental health in the modern world.

Jeonghan Yun’s ‘Photograph Drawing III’ encourages discussion about how photography and drawing are defined, directing focus to either the different lenses or the abstract of the overall piece. Contemporary art is a continually fluctuating practice, where works like Yun’s facilitates how these mediums are displayed and interpreted. York, as a proud member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, celebrates new and ground-breaking installations which demonstrate the creativity and innovation of contemporary artists.