OCA News: Jo Whittle John Moores Painting Prize success

Open College of the Arts extends many congratulations to OCA painting tutor Jo Whittle who was one of the final four shortlisted for the John Moores painting Prize 2025 and is currently taking part in the winners exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery.

Launched in 1957, the prize is open to all artists working with paint in the UK. Past prize-winners have included Peter Doig, Rose Wylie, David Hockney, Mary Martin and Sir Peter Blake. It is arguably the preeminent painting prize in the UK.

The prize has a major exhibition every two years and the current exhibition opened on 6/9/25 at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and will continue until 1/3/26 so there is plenty of time to go and see Jo’s work with the other finalists and the winning painting by Ally Fallon.

Jo’s painting was used by the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones to headline his arts roundup on 5/9/25 which is a fantastic additional plaudit.

“The work deploys material and illusory qualities of paint in an exploration of both real and imagined landscapes with subjects that represent a re-enactment of the romantic ruin, with decaying structures and verdigrised surfaces slumping under glowering skies. The structures in the paintings, however, represent fragile and temporary structures constructed within these notions of the ruin and time passing. Canvas sits in water; ropes are pegged in to fluid land. Time sits still and moments brush against each other; canvas rots and weeds scramble over surfaces whilst, incongruously, some lights remain on or have just been lit. They hold their own histories, ideas of vanished events once frenetic now silenced and ominous in dusk or rain. Concealing their internal space whilst their exposed surfaces weather, they are hostile in their refusal to reveal their secrets. The still light ossifies both tents and trees, like a petrified forest, whilst liquid, motile elements pool around them making these worlds almost static, yet they seem be slowly moving towards an uncertain or foreboding conclusion.”

(https://www.joannawhittle.com/about)

The Painting Department at OCA is a vibrant and lively department with a superb tutor team, of whom Jo is a much respected member. Jo’s students benefit daily from her passion for all things paint – something the John Moores Prize is designed to cherish and promote. The benefits of this dedicated discipline specific programme allow for the nurturing of expertise and skill and for people who are just really excited about paint and its properties to form a community of practice. Well done Jo from all the paint heads!

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/sep/05/prized-paintings-unburied-treasures-and-murderous-millais-the-week-in-art

https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/whatson/walker-art-gallery/exhibition/john-moores-painting-prize-2025#section–the-exhibition