Art X-UK: Yorkshire & Humber artists join the Government Art Collection
We are celebrating the latest chapter of Art X-UK, our partnership with the Government Art Collection, which connects regional expertise with national collecting.
Art X-UK is the Government Art Collection’s annual project that supports and collects from artists across the UK, each year focusing on artists from a different region.
We’re delighted to be working with the Government Art Collection and to have represented the incredible artistic talent of Yorkshire and the Humber throughout the selection process.
Credit: Kedisha Coakley, I AM HERE: Breadfruit II, 2023Over the course of 2025 and 2026, we have worked with the Government Art Collection worked with to acquire works by four artists from our region. The works will now enter the Government Art Collection and be displayed in government buildings around the world.
The four artists from our region are Grace Clifford, Kedisha Coakley, Sam Metz, and Karanjit Panesar.
For Grace Clifford, the acquisition of Bronze Pub Stool is inseparable from the place and community that enabled the work to develop:
“Seeing my bronze pub stool acquired by the Government Art Collection, a work that I truly don't think would have been possible for me to actualise if I wasn’t practising in Sheffield, where I've been allowed time and space to develop my technical skills and sculptural practice, fills me with joy and pride.
It really takes a village to make these things happen; from the day I began making the moulds, to casting the pub stool to being supported into the acquisition. My heart sings and I am so proud to know a bronze pub stool now sits amongst such a significant public collection.”
Credit: Grace Clifford, Bronze Pub Stool, 2022, and detail of Bronze Pub Stool, 2022Artists’ practices grow through place: through communities, peer networks, studios, organisations, curators and the time and space needed to develop work. Art X-UK creates a route for that knowledge to inform national collecting.
As devolution continues to reshape cultural policy and investment across England, the programme also demonstrates the importance of regional visual arts networks in connecting artists and places with national institutions and international audiences.
Kedisha Coakley on what the acquisition means:
“To have Collection 15 and I AM HERE: Breadfruit II enter the Government Art Collection feels significant because my practice has always been about making visible histories and Black British experiences that I didn’t see reflected in the collections around me. These sculptures trace the entanglement of colonialism, botany, extraction and Black identity, so their place within a national collection feels like a meaningful shift in whose histories are held and remembered.
Sheffield and Yorkshire have been central to my practice, giving me the community, space and opportunities to develop this work. For me, this acquisition is not simply about recognition; it is about contributing to a fuller, more complex national story.”
This is about more than individual acquisitions. It is about ensuring that our national collections reflect the breadth of contemporary practice across England, while recognising the ecosystems that make ambitious artistic careers possible, so we are honoured to have a part in this!
Credit: Karanjit Panesar, A reflection, a photograph (the light), 2024, ©Rob Battersby (part of wider work)Our YVAN CEO, Sharon Gill, on the partnership with Government Art Collection:
“It has been a real privilege to work with colleagues across the Yorkshire region to discuss and share our knowledge and joy in the creativity, and for the opportunity to support artists to be collected and celebrated for and by the nation. The hardest part was limiting the number of nominations, because the validation and subsequent confidence in your own practice such an honour brings cannot be underestimated. My only wish is that we could suggest artists from our region – whose work will travel the world and represent this beautiful county – for the Collection every year!”
There were also four artists' works acquired from the East of England too in this latest chapter, Claire Cansick, Amartey Golding, Issam Kourbaj, and Sikelela Owen.
Congratulations to all eight regional artists whose work will now join the Government Art Collection.
And thank you to our partners across Art X-UK, the Government Art Collection, CVAN and CVAN East for making this collaboration and important acquisition possible.
Credit: Sam Metz, Drawing as Stimming, fixed charcoal on cartridge paper, 2021