Neurodivergent Manchester artist Charmagne Coble has been announced as the winner of a national Art of the Year competition.
Competition organiser PACK & SEND provides a range of postal, freight, courier, packing and removal services, operating through a national service centre network, and specialising in the shipment of fragile, large, awkward and valuable items.
An approved service provider to LAPADA, the largest association of professional art and antiques dealers in the UK, the company has handled packing and shipping of artworks by some of the world’s most famous artists, including Banksy, Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, Tracey Emin and Jeff Koons, and is a preferred supplier of art shipping services to galleries, collectors, dealers, artists and exhibitions around the world.
Its annual Art of the Year competition celebrates the works of up-and-coming UK artists, with the winner receiving £250 vouchers to support shipment of their own art with PACK & SEND, as well as promotion across the international company’s own social media.
Manchester-based artist Charmagne Coble won this year’s competition with her artwork Trace, a photographic artwork which uses the artist’s own body as a medium.
Charmagne Coble is a neurodivergent, British, fine artist who, after being a witness to her father’s death at 18 years old, began to use art as a way to express herself, creating a practice focused on loss, trauma and mental health.
Her art also confronts the intense subject of eating disorders through mediums of photography, printmaking and found mediums.
She has a Master’s Degree in Fine Art and has exhibited across the globe with her latest exhibitions including Sotheby’s, London.
She describes her winning artwork, Trace, as, “exploring the complex relationship between absence and presence and how difficult it is to separate the two”, using her own body as the medium to, “express personal experiences of decay and absence by leaving traces of the human body through powders on the skin.”
Accepting her prize at her local PACK & SEND service centre at Salford Quays, Charmagne said: “I’m really pleased to have my artwork recognised in this way by PACK & SEND, which has worked with some of the most famous and respected fine artists in the world.
“It’s great to see an international company of their standing supporting and championing artists at the grassroots level, helping artists like myself introduce their work to wider audiences.”
To find out more about how PACK & SEND works with fine artists, go to www.packsend.co.uk. To find out more Charmagne’s work, go to www.charmagnecoble.com.