Aquinas graduate wins Art Gallery prize

Mary Ashcroft, ex-Aquinas Student, has won a prestigious Manchester Art Gallery competition.

Mary left Aquinas last summer having achieved an A* in her A level Art, Craft and Design. She is now studying at Manchester Metropolitan University on the Art and Design Foundation course.

The competition, based on paper cutting, was run by Manchester Art Gallery relating to their current exhibition ‘First Cut’. Students from the MMU Foundation course were given a weekend to create a paper cut that described a person known to them.

Mary wanted the design to be significant and symbolic of identity so she came up with the idea of a fingerprint. She based the piece on her Grandad who passed away quite recently, as he had a really interesting life and had fought in the war. She decided to do a poem in the shape of a fingerprint and used ‘Spring Offensive’ by Wilfred Owen. She wrote a passage from the poem and cut out the words to form the fingerprint, creating a border with scattered letters.

Mary Ashcroft with the winning paper cut based on Wilfred Owen’s poem “Spring Offensive"

After seeing the other entries she was stunned to find out she had won,and was invited to Manchester Art Gallery for a presentation/unveiling of her work framed and hung on the wall. Now the work is included in the ‘First Cut’ exhibition, and will be on display at the Gallery until the end of January.