Professor Maurice Cockrill R.A., Keeper of the Royal Academy Schools is chairing the panel of judges for the 2nd year running.

Born in Hartlepool, he studied at Wrexham School of Art & then Denbigh Technical College & later the University of Reading. He currently lives in London and is the Keeper of the Royal Academy Schools and as such manages the RA Schools of the Establishment as well as being a member of the Board and Executive Committee.

His work is shown in many public collections including the British Museum and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

Richard Cork
Richard Cork is an award-winning art critic, historian, broadcaster and exhibition curator. His many acclaimed b ooks include landmark studies on Vorticism, Art Beyond the Gallery, David Bomberg, Art and the Great War, & four paperbacks of his critical writings on modern art (all published by Yale University Press).

Gavin Turk
Gavin Turk lives and works in London and is one of the Young British Artists (a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists which includes Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin) .

Gavin was born in Guildford in 1967, and went to the Royal College of Art. However, in 1991, the tutors refused to give him the final degree because of his show, called Cave, which consisted of a whitewashed studio space, containing only a blue heritage plaque (of the kind normally found on historic buildings) commemorating his own presence as a sculptor. This bestowed some instant notoriety on Turk, whose work was collected by Charles Saatchi.

He has participated in several important group exhibitions such as Istanbul Biennial (1999), ‘Century City’, Tate Modern, London (2001), ‘Remix: Contemporary Art and Pop’, Tate Liverpool (2002) and ‘Coollustre’, Collection Lambert en Avignon (2003). Solo exhibitions include South London Gallery (1998), Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva (2000), The New Art Gallery, Walsall (2002) and Schloss Eggenberg, Graz (2006).