Former student Hannah Honeywill's 'Unfunction/Function’ chair selected for prestigious Threadneedle Prize exhibition.

Former Chippendale Furniture student and Yorkshire artist Hannah Honeywill has just been chosen for the final exhibition of the Threadneedle Prize, the UK’s most prestigious competition for representational art and sculpture.

Her piece, ‘Unfunction/Function’, a reshaped chair which questions how people experience the form and function of everyday objects, was selected from 4,300 entries. Honeywill is now one of just 45 artists in line for the £25,000 prize and her work will be exhibited at London’s Mall Galleries between the 22nd of September and 8th of October.

Hannah, who was a furniture student at the Chippendale School of Furniture in 2006-07, commented: “Those furniture design and furniture making skills have come in useful!”

The Threadneedle Prize is one of the largest prizes for a single work of art in the UK and will be awarded at the close of the exhibition by a prestigious panel of judges including Godfrey Worsdale, director of BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Julie Lomax, head of visual arts for the Arts Council and Lisa Milroy, head of graduate painting at The Slade School of Fine Art.

Honeywill lives in Hebden Bridge and teaches art at Calderdale College, Todmorden, to mature students hoping to access higher education. She trained at Camberwell College of Art, London, holds a degree in Visual Arts, spent a year learning the practical art of furniture design at Chippendale School of Furniture in Scotland, and now works from studios at Warley Springs, near Halifax.

Hannah Honeywill’s reshaped chair.