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Christine Risley Award

The Christine Risley Award celebrates outstanding textile creations by graduating ӣƵ students and the diverse spectrum of contemporary textile practices.

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About the Christine Risley Award

The Christine Risley Award is a cash prize awarded by the Goldsmiths Textile Collection & Constance Howard Gallery to a graduating ӣƵ student for outstanding work relating to textiles, in memory of Christine Risley.

Final-year undergraduate students currently enrolled in Goldsmiths' Art or Design Departments are eligible to apply for the Christine Risley Award, recognising the multifaceted nature of modern textile practices.

Annually, the Goldsmiths Textile Collection & Constance Howard Gallery presents a £500 cash prize to the winner, in recognition of their innovative and practice-based work within the realm of textiles.

Made possible by Christine Risley, a revered ӣƵ alumna, the Christine Risley Award celebrates the diverse expressions within contemporary textile practices. Winners not only receive the cash prize but also the chance to showcase their work at the Constance Howard Gallery, which houses the esteemed Goldsmiths Textile Collection.

How to apply

Submissions for the 2027 Award will open in April.

The Christine Risley Award Winner 2026

The Goldsmiths Textile Collection and Constance Howard Gallery are delighted to announce the 2026 Christine Risley Award Winner as BA Design graduate, Harsheen Kaur. 

A formal Victorian-style dining table with a woven lace canopy inspired by an Indian charpoy, combining colonial and traditional design elements to explore themes of rest and decolonisation.

Play: De-Colonial Subversion and Emotion Refuge, Harsheen Kaur, 2026

Harsheen’s work focuses on the impact of the British Raj’s arrival on India’s design language, in which indigenous furniture, designed for freedom of movement, was replaced with formal furniture that controls the body and the civilian. Harsheen’s work playfully subverts Victorian furniture. By interjecting the Indian charpoy (a four-legged frame woven from rope, designed for lounging), translated through lacework, into a formal dining table, she reclaims rest as decolonial practice. 

The judges unanimously praised Harsheen’s thoughtful and powerful work, which spoke to contemporary conversations about colonialism and the impact of the British empire on specific cultural design languages. The work investigates the body, play, rest, and concepts of propriety, and the judges were enchanted by the reinterpretation and reappropriation of Victorian lacework in the rope canopy. 

Previous recipients

Ping Chen Thing in Itself 2025

2025 - Ping Chen

The winner of the 2025 Christine Risley Award Winner was BA Design graduate, Ping Chen. 

 

An image of a textile piece of art

2024 - Olivia Pelham

The winner of the 2024 Christine Risley Award Winner was BA Fine Art graduate, Olivia Pelham.

An image of a textile piece of art

2023 - Azna Solas May

The winner of the 2023 Christine Risley Award Winner was BA Fine Art graduate, Azna May.

2022 - Alice Birch

The winner of the 2022 Christine Risley Award was Alice Birch for her work Woven Journeys.

A hand on a piece of embroidered cloth

2021 - Aarushi Matiyani

The 2021 Christine Risley Award Winner was Design graduate, Aarushi Matiyani.

Aarushi’s work, Stitched Sedition, is a continuously growing archive on textile that records the district-wide network shutdowns in India.

A textile installation in a white exhibition space

2020 - Tyreis Holder

The 2020 Christine Risley Award Winner was BA Art graduate, Tyreis Holder.

Her practice explores self-identity and her own ‘trilogy of cultures’ through the language of textiles and clothing.  

A black woven artwork hanging in a white exhibition space

2019 - Farrah Riley-Gray

The winner of the Christine Risley Award 2019 is BA (Hons) Fine Art graduate Farrah Riley Gray.

The judging panel was impressed by her work which combined aesthetics and politics in a carefully considered combination of textile and sound work.

A still from a video, an object is on fire in a patch of green grass

2018 - Kobby Adi

The recipient of the 2018 Christine Risley Award was BA (Hons) Fine Art graduate Kobby Adi.

Adi’s work situates the use of textiles amongst a thoughtful and multi-layered installation

Two figures in elaborate coloured gowns embrace

2017 - Clémentine Bedos

The winner of the Christine Risley Award 2017 was BA (Hons) Fine Art graduate Clémentine Marie Jeanne Durand-Bedos.

Her work Contagious Hystories very sensitively dealt with ideas around the divided self. Her performance work containged handmade garments using digital, and screen printing in combination with cyanotype processes

A blue scuptural artwork on a concrete structure

2016 - Louise Madsen

The 2016 Christine Risley Award was awarded to BA (Hons) Fine Art graduate, Louise Madsen.

A set of tufted works

2015 - Melinda Lauw

The 2015 Christine Risley Award was awarded to BA (Hons) Fine Art and History of Art graduate Melinda Lauw for her set of tufted works.

An orange textile form in the foreground

2014 - Sophia Freeman

The 2014 Christine Risley Award was awarded to BA (Hons) Fine Art and History of Art graduate Sophia Freeman.