If successful, I would use the Dover Prize bursary to develop a new body of work exploring how immersive installation practices can be made more inclusive for neurodivergent audiences. This work builds on research I undertook in 2024 as the recipient of the Stephen Herbert Award, where I studied historical optical devices. These early immersive forms, often enhanced by lighting effects, created focused, tunnel-like visual experiences.
The funding would support a new collaboration with a theatrical lighting designer through which I will learn and apply lighting strategies to my installations to increase their immersive potential without relying on digital mapping technology. It would support the development and delivery of a series of inclusive modelmaking workshops that invite participants to explore colour and light using personal images and dioramas, experimenting with a lightbox. These workshops will encourage reflection on what makes immersive spaces feel safe and engaging and will help generate new insights into how sensory design can be used to reduce cognitive overload and support focused, haptic engagement – informing my installation designs.
Studio time and materials will allow me to construct new “installation drawings”—large-scale, paper-based environments that invite slow, embodied interaction. I will experiment with form, lighting, and layered visual space to simulate the sensation of an “attention tunnel,” a concept drawn from monotropism, which describes the narrow, deep focus often experienced by neurodivergent individuals. Drawing on lived experience and findings from participant workshops, these works will be developed into a series of prototype environments, one of which will be developed for exhibition.
The Dover Prize would give me time to reflect, experiment, and test ideas that mark a significant shift in my practice. It offers a rare opportunity to deepen my research, explore new methods of collaboration, and develop ambitious, inclusive installation work that reimagines immersion as a space for neurodiverse engagement and creative attention.
My proposed work would contribute to Darlington’s ambition to become the most autism-friendly town in the UK. As a neurodivergent artist with a practice rooted in sensory engagement and inclusion, I see the Dover Prize as a vital opportunity to contribute meaningfully to this vision. My research explores how immersive installations can be designed to support neurodivergent modes of attention, particularly monotropic focus, through the use of light, touch, and narrative environments.
I bring over 21 years’ experience as an educator, beginning my teaching career in a specialist SEND centre. This experience will inform the delivery of creative workshops tailored to neurodivergent participants and families, using dioramas and lightboxes to help individuals visualise and share the environments in which they feel most comfortable and engaged. I intend to create an installation that acts as an attention tunnel, and that will serve as a site of exploration and performance, potentially through collaboration with local theatre groups such as Hullabaloo.
Through collaboration with local organisations such as the North East Autism Society and Darlington Library, workshops would offer a platform for creative expression and increase visibility of neurodivergent perspectives in the arts, supporting Darlington’s leadership in inclusive cultural innovation.
Over the past 14 years, I have worked as a visual artist and educator. I hold Qualified Teacher Status and deliver workshops in schools and HE institutions (UEL / AUB / West Dean College). I am
interested in art as an inclusive learning tool and attend Special Interest Group events on neurodiversity in
the arts at Kingston University. I have exhibited widely in the UK (RA, Walker Art Gallery, RWA, RSA,
Jerwood Space) and internationally. I won the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2005 and was one of five
shortlisted artists for the John Moores Prize 2014, receiving the Visitor’s Choice Award. My work is held in
the Women’s Art Collection and Southampton City Art Gallery. I specialise in painting and drawing with a
focus on People and Place, examining how the environments that I represent might be understood and
repurposed as learning tools. In 2019, I was awarded the John Ruskin Prize for an immersive drawn
installation exploring this subject. Since then, I have wanted to focus my practice on designing and
exhibiting installations.
I hold a PhD from the Arts University Bournemouth / the University of the Arts London in Fine Art: Drawing, which was obtained in 2023. During this four-year course, I created a range of publicly exhibited “installation drawings”, which formed the focus of my thesis. I also researched historical optical devices in the V&A Collection, which formed the basis of my installation designs.
I obtained a PD Dip in Fine Art from the Royal Academy Schools in 2010 and a BA Hons in Fine Art: Painting from Wimbledon College of Art in 2007.
In 2024, I was awarded the Stephen Herbert Award to carry out research at the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum. My research focused on raree shows and peep shows. I looked at objects, including telescopic and perspective views, a well as pre-cinematic viewing technologies that incorporated light sources, including vue d’optiques and magic lanterns.
In 2019, I received the John Ruskin Prize for Proscenium, a 3m high by 3m wide hand-painted, three-dimensional paper installation based on an optical toy. The work was exhibited at the Holden Gallery, Manchester. The jury—comprising artists Hew Locke and Barbara Walker, and architectural historian Dr Jonathan Foyle—praised its refusal of the conventional boundaries of watercolour.
In 2014 I was one of 5 artists shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize and went on to receive the Visitors’ Choice Award voted on by visitors to the gallery.
In 2005 I was awarded the Jerwood Drawing Prize.
Other awards include:
2020 – Baohong Watercolour Artist’s Prize, Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours; David Gluck and RWS
Prize, Royal Watercolour Society
2019 – Works on Paper Prize, Royal West of England Academy
2015 Winsor and Newton Painting Prize, First Prize Winner
2010 Dunoyer De Segonzac Award, Royal Academy of Art; Dover Arts Club Award, Royal Academy of Art
2006 British Institution Award, Royal Academy Summer Show, First Prize Winner
I am the President of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours – an arts collective and educational charity. As such, I am part of a panel selecting work for the annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London, which I curate. I am also responsible for liaising with artists, as well as partners and sponsors of the exhibition, securing prizes and new income streams. I recently established a materials bursary for secondary schools. Other responsibilities include finding exhibition venues across the UK to host members’ exhibitions and workshops, and talks, which are delivered as part of the society’s charitable aims.
In 2025, I received the Paper & Print Commission through Double Elephant Print Workshop. The Heritage Lottery funded commission was intended for an artist or collective to create new work that creatively responds to the history of Exeter’s paper mills through the research gathered in collaboration with community groups and academics at Exeter University. I explored the project through the theme of the papermaking landscape, reinterpreting fragments of the milling process, which have been left as traces within this. As part of the project, I learned blind embossing processes and applied these to creating tactile drawn surfaces, intended as a form of inclusive engagement for those with visual processing difficulties. This exhibition was accompanied by workshops for local SEND groups who created responses to and interacted with the work.
In 2020 I was awarded a commission to make an installation at Sewerby Hall, Yorkshire, as part of the East Riding Visual Arts Uplift, funded by the Arts Council. In consultation with staff and volunteers at the Hall, I developed a site-specific, walkthrough paper structure that explored ruination and the architectural forms of the site. The installation was described as “curiosity-inspiring” (Scarborough News) and commended for its intricately concealed details that rewarded close and prolonged attention. Accompanying activities included creative workshops for young people, artist talks, and an emotional literacy competition.
In 2022, I was commissioned by the Garden Museum, London, to produce an installation for their family-themed summer exhibition based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book, The Secret Garden. The installation proposed post-industrial landscapes as places of refuge and retreat. This paper-based, immersive landscape extended into a participatory format through a series of public workshops where visitors created their own dioramas. The show was listed by The Londonist as one of the top exhibitions in the UK that summer.
My work has been purchased by the Saatchi Collection and is part of the Women’s Art Collection and the Royal West of England Academy and Southampton City Art Gallery Collections.
“Lavishing love on the overlooked” in Garageland 21: Urban Ghosts, Transition Editions
The PRSD – Exeter’s paper-making heritage revealed in imaginative and immersive exhibition, February 2025
BBC News – Exeter’s paper mills celebrated in exhibition, February 2025
FAD Magazine – The Top Exhibitions To See in London, February 2023
Jackson’s Art Blog – Inside the Sketchbook of Juliette Losq, August 2022
The Evergreen Review – Breakbone, May 2022
Winsor and Newton – Our Featured Artist, October 2021 – PDF here
Visionary Projects – The August Selection: 4 Artists We Love, 2 August 2021
The York Press, New Art on Display at Sewerby Hall and Gardens, 26 June 2021
FAD Magazine, The Top 6 Sculpture Exhibitions to See in London Today, Tabish Kahn, 9 May 2021
The Asian Curator – Juliette Losq, 28 May 2020
The Heong Gallery – Juliette Losq: a benign vision of an apocalyptic future, 13 May 2020
Khachilife – Beauty & Decay: An Interview with Artist Juliette Losq, 17 March 2020
Interalia Magazine – Between the urban world and the wilderness, March 2019
Artinfo – Artist to Watch: Juliette Losq Captures the Ominous Beauty of Abandoned Places, 5 October 2012
Elle Magazine – The Class of 2010
Available here – https://www.losq.co.uk/press
I am represented by James Freeman Gallery, London and have taken part in several shows there over the past five years as well as off-site projects organised by the gallery.
My most recent exhibition was Nature Immortelle, which took place earlier this year. I am about to take part in an exhibition organised through the gallery at Great St Bart’s Church, Spitalfields, London. “Slipping the Veil is an exhibition of twelve contemporary artists in London’s oldest church, curated by Elena Unger, Artist in Residence at the Church, and James Freeman.”
Details of previous shows, including videos, can be found here https://www.jamesfreemangallery.com/artist/juliet-losq/
In 2011, I took part in the Fountainhead Residency, Miami, which is intended to empower artists by making connections that lead to growth in their work and careers, providing time and space to experiment and challenge their practice. https://www.fountainheadarts.org/about
Email: juliettelosq@gmail.com
Address: 74 Gould Road, Twickenham, Middx, TW2 6RW, GB
Local Authority: Richmond Upon Thames
