‘Sphenoid Rorschach’ by Hugo Wilson

Glicee Print
129.5cm x 137.2cm
Edition of 5

Nominated by Kevin Spacey; Artistic Director, the Old Vic theatre.

The sphenoid bone lies at the base of the skull, one of the seven bones that articulate to form the orbit, and houses the pituitary gland. The Rorschach inkblot test is a method of psychological evaluation in which subjects' instant perceptions of arbitrary smudged black inkblots are recorded and then analyzed intuitively or by key and can be used to determine emotional function and psychotic thinking.

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‘Rorschach Sphenoid Rorschach’ by Hugo Wilson

Charcoal and oil paint on prepared paper
129.5cm x 137.2cm

Nominated by Kevin Spacey; Artistic Director, the Old Vic theatre.

Following the photograph ‘Rorschach Sphenoid’, this drawing elaborates on the ironic similitude between the housing for the pituitary gland, the perceived origin of consciousness and hormonal regulator and the supposedly non-specific inkblot. Wilson’s own re-working of the bone (or blot) in Charcoal and Oil paint highlights the interpretive ambiguity, which Wilson returns to persistently.

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‘Modified Phrenology Head’ by Hugo Wilson

30.5cm x 15.2cm

Nominated by Kevin Spacey; Artistic Director, the Old Vic theatre.

Wilson takes the archetypal version of the porcelain phrenology head, a visual aid from the now discredited scientific belief that you can derive a subject's personality from the shape of the skull, whose contours were defined by the size of localized brain development. The icon adds plays with ideas of physical and mental mirroring brought out by the other pieces, more so as it has been altered to localize psychotic brain functioning.

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‘No No No’ by Bouke de Vries

19th century Samson porcelain and mixed media
27cm x17cm x 43cm

Nominated by Kay Saatchi; curator and collector of contemporary art

Built from a broken 18th century French Statuette of the Muse of Music, made with the highly collectable Meissen porcelin, de Vries here builds up resin, which would ordinarily be used to reconstruct missing parts to reconfigure the figure as a pop star, accurately rendering in her Glastonbury outfit.

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‘Sands of Time’ by Bouke de Vries

Hourglass and mixed media
17cm x17cm x26cm

Nominated by Kay Saatchi; curator and collector of contemporary art

Echoing the point of destruction of the hour-glass itself, here de Vries puts together several icons from Memento Mori ('remember you shall die'), an offshoot from 17th and 18th century symbolism in oil painting, from the insect to butterfly transformation to the obvious snads of time. The still life scene has been frozen at the moment that the time ran out, the whole glass structure falling out rather than just the sand

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‘Dead Nature 4’ by Bouke de Vries

18th century Worcester porcelain bowl and mixed media
30cm x 30cm x 16cm

Nominated by Kay Saatchi; curator and collector of contemporary art

Punning on the French translation of Still Life ('Nature Mort') in the title, here de Vries presents a overly accurate preservation of this stereotypical still life fruit bowl. The fruit is slowly rotting while the bowl has collapsed. The piece contains trademark symblism, such as the ivy, but also points to the value of his craft with the contrast between rotting fruit and the permanency of the ceramic, even when broken.

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‘Cornelius’ by Sarah Muirhead

Acrylic on wooden board
160cm x 110cm

Nominated by Kirsty Wark; journalist and television presenter who has fronted Newsnight since 1993 and its weekly arts edition Newsnight Review

Painted of a friend of the artist who organises an art and music night in Edinburgh where she is only artist so far attending. Here, as in other pieces, Muirhead eschews the role of portrait artist and lets the subject portray himself, creating the gestures and decorations that describe his idea of himself while conscious of being observed.

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‘Beheading Of The Cockerel’ by Tereza Bušková

Screen print
103cm x 73cm
Edition 3 of 3

Nominated by Anita Zabludowicz; 176 / Zabludowicz Collection founder

In an amalgam of tradition and modernity, this work utilizes a pre-harvest ritual still celebrated in Moravia. Young girls lead a cockerel, now cardboard cutout, by red ribbons to be bound to a barrel before a blindfolded young boy attempts to behead it.

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‘Stunted Sonnet’ by Rose Blake

Screen print
57cm x 75cm
Edition of 4

Nominated by Sir Peter Blake; English pop artist who designed the cover of the Beatles ‘Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band’ album

Using a poem by Adrain Mitchell which Blake heard him read in one of his last public engagements before his death, the artist invites the viewer to consider the many ways in which smoking is comparable to sex. Funny in its truth, the colourful images gently mock the all-encompassing intensity of human behaviours.

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‘Annus Mirabilis’ by Rose Blake

Screen print
55cm x 73cm
Edition of 20

Nominated by Sir Peter Blake; English pop artist who designed the cover of the Beatles ‘Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band’ album

Employing two stalwarts of 60s culture; The Beatles and the sexual revolution, this amusing illustration effectively evokes the essence of the era with both its subject and clash of colours. With figures like an airline safety card, and the album title of ‘Please, please, me’ this comic image appears almost like a how-to manual.

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'I need to try and leave here one day’ by Jo Robertson

Oil on canvas
45cm x 60cm

Nominated by Tracey Emin; former Turner Prize nominated artist and British representative at the Venice Biennale 2007

Robertson's work shows a sort of free talking and prescriptive honesty. Although it should not be seen as a record or testimony, it does create emotionally charged spaces, inside bedrooms and in barren landscapes and skies, less distinct contexts for her experience and emotions to play out.

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'Get off me assholes' by Jo Robertson

Oil on canvas
45cm x 60cm

Nominated by Tracey Emin; former Turner Prize nominated artist and British representative at the Venice Biennale 2007

Robertson is also a folk musician and these most recent paintings rflect the lyrical and confessional qualities of the genre. On occasion she describes the act of painting as a sort of process of dealing with horrific things, a therapeutic of exhuming activity. 'They become peaceful,' she explains, 'in the same way that war photography looks peaceful.'

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‘Middleburg’ by Matthew Musgrave

Oil on linen
12cm x 12cm

Nominated by Alannah Weston; Creative Director, Selfridges

Like a curious artifact, this ambiguous image draws the viewer in, but remains deliberately unresolved, as though it's true essence lies permanently just outside our grasp. The unusually murky colours reflect Musgrave's desire to heighten the mystery of the piece, making it more flexible to interpretation.

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‘Long view, short cut’ by Constintin Debuffu

Cut-vinyl on glass
113cm x 62cm

Nominated by Zaha Hadid; Architect

Multiple vinyl overlays fuse shapes, colours reminiscent of a subway map, with text challenging the reader to adventure beyond the armour of Selfridges. Literally through a fauvist treasure map with amusing connotations of misguided tourism, or magnanimous advertising, the artist uses light and written word to activate the wider space of the exhibition, intervening in our assumptions of the physical containment of a show or shop.

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‘Model Drawing 05’ by Charles Danby

Graphite and glicee print on Hahnemuhle rag
89cm x 129cm

Nominated by Conrad Shawcross; British artist who makes large scale structural work driven by philosophical and scientific concerns

Fashion modeling thrives of simultaneous feeling of connection or admiration and distance and division, such as this example of the model turning away from the camera. Similarly the impersonal nature of mass produced advertising is still branded for the individual. The intimate use of pencil shows a human response to the print media.

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‘Diagonal Landscape 02’ by Charles Danby,

Graphite and highlighter on paper
15cm x 22cm

Nominated by Conrad Shawcross; British artist who makes large scale structural work driven by philosophical and scientific concerns

In his series of Diagonal Landscapes, Danby divides rectangles with simple diagonals and heavily works one side of the division. The resulting shape, particularly in the light of the title immediately conjures a mountain, more so because of the arrangement catches the light in the fashion of a north and south face.

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‘Diagonal Landscape 04’ by Charles Danby

Graphite and highlighter on paper
15cm x 22cm

Nominated by Conrad Shawcross; British artist who makes large scale structural work driven by philosophical and scientific concerns.

The diagonal line is a well-known visual trigger for anxiety and Danby combines that with a slicing and splitting of the page. The obsessive working of one side and over other, including some knife incisions can also be seen as antithesis to the simplicity and compelling beauty of the construction.

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