Eric Butcher
Eric was selected as the Trust’s 2025 Award-winner from an extremely strong field of artists entering the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Exhibition, by our trustee, Rhian Kempadoo-Millar, Leah Cross, Director of Programmes at Hastings Contemporary, and Anita Taylor, Director of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, and Drawing Projects UK. His winning entry was T/R 1058 (below).
“The award would provide me with the opportunity to liberate my work from the confines of the picture frame and the unique characteristics of the venue would enable me to create a fully immersive experience with the audience at its centre. The financial support which the award provides would enable me to fund the extensive period of research and development which such a project would require”
Born in Singapore, he now lives and works in Oxfordshire. After 25 years devoted to the patient and incremental development of a practice of reductive, self-referential process-based painting, Butcher's work changed dramatically in 2020. "Confronted by the devastating impact of human behaviour on the planet, my former studio practice seemed deeply problematic and indulgent. What was it that my work consisted of but taking precious resources and turning them into useless objects?"
Endgame is the modus operandi of all Butcher's current and future creative work. He has committed to use only those materials already available in the studio; using up, repurposing and recycling what he already has without consuming more. He will draw out his use of current resources for as long as possible, being as frugal as he can and when he has run out of materials he will, in his words, “simply stop making art.”