Visitors' Choice
John Moores 24 - The Walker Art Gallery

The £1,000 Visitors’ Choice prize in the John Moores 24 exhibition of contemporary painting has been won by Nicholas Middleton with 'Scene From a Contemporary Novel'.
Nicholas is pictured below receiving his cheque for £1000 from curator and judge Ann Bukantas alongside some of the visitors who helped choose the winning work.
His monochrome oil painting depicting a young woman in a rubbish-strewn street polled an impressive 709 votes out of a total of 5,063 cast by visitors to the exhibition between 16 September and 29 October 2006. Visitors could choose any of the exhibition’s 52 pictures.

Comments about 'Scene From a Contemporary Novel' on the Visitors’ Choice voting cards included: “Simply the best!� – “It has been very cleverly painted� – “LOVE IT!� – “Who needs colour to bring things to life?� – “All that is good about photo-realist painting� “The girl in the picture could well be myself … Very evocative�.

Ann Bukantas, the Walker’s curator of fine art and a John Moores 24 jury member, says: “This is a well-deserved Visitors’ Choice winner with its almost photographic detail which cannot fail to fascinate the viewer. When we were judging the competition we spent a lot of time looking at this remarkable painting which also says a lot about contemporary urban life.�

Born in London in 1975, Nicholas Middleton studied at London Guildhall University and Winchester School of Art. His exhibitions include Defining the Times (Milton Keynes Gallery 2000), The Discerning Eye (Mall Galleries, London 2004) and BP Portrait Award 2004 and 2005 at the National Portrait Gallery.

Nicholas was shortlisted for the BOC Emerging Artist Award in 2002, has shown four times in the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy and was included in John Moores 23 (2004).

Second in the poll was Graham Crowley’s prizewinning painting 'Red Reflection' (454 votes) (pictured below) and third was Gary ‘Dollman’ Sollars’ 'When I Grow Up I Want To Go In There' (317).

John Moores 24 ends on Sunday 26 November 2006