/prod01/channel_8/media/marketing-media/news/news-2026/Alluvium-by-Katherine-Bouleau_Platform-Graduate-Award-2026_.jpg)
Oliver Sumner, Manager of CVAN South East, said: “We are delighted to be celebrating fifteen years of this award with our gallery and university partners. The scheme has always evolved, and we are acutely aware of the contrasting world this year’s graduates experience from our first cohort in 2012. That said, their professional support needs have been fundamentally consistent - covering living costs, building their network, establishing a profile and finding affordable workspace.
“I wish all this year’s exhibitors the very best of luck and look forward to supporting them on their path in this crucial first year since graduation.”
Katherine and Ana will have their work on show at Aspex Portsmouth art gallery, in an exhibition with eight other emerging artists, titled The Shape of a Spell.
Ana’s piece, Taxonomy of Imperfection, explores the tension between fragility and strength through 200 paper-and-plaster sculptures.
Ana said of her work: “Paper, vulnerable and responsive, mirrors the instability of the mind, while plaster fixes each moment, transforming the transient into the enduring. Each form emerges through a process of control and release, completely abstract, irregular, and unresolved. Individually, they hold quiet acts of surrender; together however, they accumulate into a system shaped by repetition and obsession. The intended form is never present, only its residue. Across the installation, imperfection becomes inevitable, revealing that meaning lies not in resolution, but in persistence, variation, and the relentless attempt to hold form.”
Katherine’s work is called Alluvium. It is a culmination of a years’ intimate observation of the entangled life coexisting within a garden stream. Katherine transports tonnes of spoil and the essence of the stream site into the pristine gallery space, fabulating an immersive, fantasy ecosystem, inhabited by speculative, supersized freshwater microbial beings. The viewer briefly coexists within this rich, multi-species ecosystem/alluvium.
They join 24 other emerging artists from 11 universities across the South of England exhibiting at visual arts venues across the South of England that will also include Modern Art Oxford and MIRROR/Arts University Plymouth.
The exhibitions will act as a springboard for the artists to connect with new audiences, arts professionals and wider networks, while gaining the experience and work that can help shape their future careers.
The awardees of the Platform Graduate Award 2026 will be announced in October, with one awardee from each location receiving a £500 bursary alongside six-months of mentoring support.
Visit the exhibition, ‘The Shape of a Spell’, from 18 September to 15 November 2026, Wednesdays to Sundays, Aspex Portsmouth, Gunwharf Quays.
Be the first to explore The Shape of a Spell at the preview evening on Thursday 17 September, 6pm-8pm. Find out more and book.
To learn more about studying Fine Art at UCA, visit the course pages.
Visit us on Saturday 26 September at the UCA Open Day.