Judges Announced for the NEAC Climate Emergency Prize 2026

Judging the prize is an eminent panel of five judges, Ade Adesina RSA RE, Anne Desmet RA RE, Bob and Roberta Smith OBE RA, Chris Orr MBE RA, and Jessica Voorsanger.

Ade Adesina RSA RE is an artist living and working in Aberdeen, Scotland. Having previously studied printmaking at Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, he graduated in 2012. Adesina is a Royal Scottish Academician, an Associate member of The Royal Society of Painters and Printmakers, and a member of The London Group. He has had artist residencies at Eton College, Glasgow Print Studio, Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, Engramme, Quebec, Canada, and Fossekleiva Kultursenter Berger Museum, Norway, 2024. More recently, he was awarded the Mario Avati Engraving Prize 2023 by the Académie des Beaux-Arts in France.

Ade's work is a visual commentary on ecology and our ever-changing world. The artist remains engaged in current affairs, referencing cultural narratives within a socio-political context. He is a traditional printmaker, painter, and sculptor. The artist combines cultures, producing work that makes people reflect on the past, present, and future.

(Photo credit: Philip Provilly)

Anne Desmet RA RE was born in Liverpool, studying at Oxford University and London’s Central School of Art. Elected Hon. Fellow of Worcester College Oxford (2018) for ‘distinction in the world of art’, she has won over 40 awards (including the Rome Scholarship in Printmaking), and has work in many public collections. The Ashmolean, Whitworth, Pallant House and V&A have substantial holdings of her engravings and collages. 

Over 50 solo exhibitions include museums in Moscow, Brazil, Italy, and at the UK’s Ashmolean; Whitworth; Holburne; Gainsborough’s House; Pallant House; Guildhall Art Gallery and, most recently, Escher in the Palace Museum, The Hague (2025-26). Commissions include engravings for the British Museum; National Gallery; British Library; V&A; Sotheby’s and Royal Mint. Editor of Printmaking Today (1998-2013), Desmet has authored eight books including Wood Engraving – A Personal Approach (Crowood Press, 2025). 

Only the third wood engraver ever elected to the Royal Academy of Arts, she lives in London and is represented by Eames Fine Art.

Bob and Roberta Smith OBE RA is actually one man. He used to collaborate with his sister but she retrained to become a group psychiatric specialist. Bob and Roberta Smith use words painted on canvases and made into signs, written in newspapers and sung in songs to say statements about art and free expression that have influenced generation of teachers and students of arts subjects to embrace the idea that the arts are a human right. Bob and Roberta Smith's painting ‘Make Art Not War’ has become a ubiquitous classic image selling alongside Andy Warhol’s Marilyn and Lichtenstein’s ‘Whaam!’ in Museum shops. Bob and Roberta’s painting of surgeon David Nott’s interview with BBC journalist Eddie Mair was recently included in the collection of the National Gallery of Wales.

Bob and Roberta Smith collaborated in the early 1990s with other artist musicians to create a lively art music scene with his band The Apathy Band. In 2015 Bob and Roberta Smith stood in a general election in the constituency of Michael Gove to directly confront him over his promotion of the EBacc that has diminished the teaching of art in schools. 

Bob and Roberta Smith has shown at MoMA PS1 New York, Tate Britain, Modern and Liverpool. In 2019 Bob and Roberta Smith had major retrospectives in La Panacee, Montpellier, curated by Nicholas Bouriaud and The Harris Museum Preston. Bob’s exhibition at Tate Modern of The Thamesmead Codex has been extended until January 2026. Bob is a Royal Academician, and was awarded an OBE in 2017. Bob believes that ‘all schools should be art schools’. 

Chris Orr MBE RA (born 1943, London) was a student at the Royal College of Art 1964-1967, elected a Royal Academician in 1995 and was Professor of Printmaking at the Royal College of Art 1998-2008. He was awarded an MBE and made Professor Emeritus in 2008. He was elected Treasurer of the Royal Academy and served from 2014 to 2018. In 2021 he was made a Freeman of the City of London.

Chris Orr has had numerous exhibitions throughout the world which include: ‘The Complete Chris Orr’ (touring show), 1976; ‘Many Mansions’ (touring show), 1990; 'Six Royal Academicians in China’, shown in Beijing, Shanghai, and London, 2005; 'LithORR graphy’, Royal Academy, Fine Rooms 2012; ‘The Miserable Lives of Fabulous Artists’ 2018 and ‘The Sleep of Reason' 2022 at the Royal Academy. He shows annually at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and the London Original Print Fair and at many other galleries. His work is in public collections including The Arts Council of England, The British Council, The Science Museum, The British Museum, The Government Art Collection, The Palace of Westminster Collection, The Ruskin Library at Lancaster University, The Queens Collection, National Portrait Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, Science Museum, Tate Britain, and Victoria and Albert Museum. 

Chris Orr is a narrative artist whose work ranges across a variety of subjects and ideas which include his speculations about the myths and lives of people such as John Ruskin, Albrecht Dürer, William Blake and Kurt Schwitters, to a fascination with the physical and social nature of the modern city. The most recent work often derives from painting and drawing on location. His work is packed with detail and rewards the viewer with interesting surprises. He is a natural anarchist and shows no compunction in putting a cricket bat into both Dürer‘s studio and Ruskin’s room. Besides a powerful painterly preoccupation with the world as he sees it, he fits into an English and European tradition of graphic satire and commentary. He engages with contemporary life and a sense of how the past has shaped us. Those who collect his work, and there are many, talk of a life-long engagement with his world contained within the pictures.

Jessica Voorsanger

Jessica says, 'I make work exploring popular culture with a particular fascination with celebrity. Historically this began with a subjective focus on fan adulation, but the work has come to explore these themes in relation to identity, gender and humour using colour, pattern, performance and interactivity as vehicles within a multi-disciplinarian practice. The work ranges from painting and installation to performance. The most recent work, post pandemic, is focused on textile-based collages (‘tapestries’) using vintage fabrics and interventions of objects and/or embroideries. They focus on the conversation between colour, pattern and form.'

She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (1987) and MA in Fine Art from University of London, Goldsmiths College (1993). Solo exhibitions include NY Blackout Tapestries, Laurent Delaye Gallery & Artist in Residence on the Starship Enterprise at SCHOOL Gallery, plus one person projects/exhibitions/events at ICA, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Gallery-33 FON, Berlin. Group exhibitions include Secret to a Good Life, Royal Academy/Star Struck, New Art Gallery Walsall, England / Hearing Voices, Seeing Things, Serpentine Gallery, London. Her monograph, published by Black Dog Publishing: The Art of Jessica Voorsanger, came out in 2014.