Andersen Press among winners at V&A Illustration Awards

Andersen Press and small publisher Design for Today have both released winning books at this year's V&A Illustration Awards.

The winner of Book Cover Award is Eva Eland for her debut picture book, When Sadness Comes to Call (Andersen Press). The judges were said to admire the "soft, unthreatening portrayal of sadness".

Meanwhile Design for Today published the winner of Book Illustration Award, which went to Clive Hicks-Jenkins for Hansel and Gretel: A Nightmare in Eight Scenes, written by Simon Armitage, with art direction by Laurence Beck. The illustrated book of poems is explored through a puppet opera, in which Hansel and Gretel are reimagined as modern-day refugees. The judges commended the illustrations for "enriching, rather than merely representing" the written word.

Tristram Hunt, director of the V&A, said: “The V&A Illustration Awards celebrate outstanding creativity by working artists, who use the fierce power of illustration to illuminate all the complexity of contemporary human experience. The winning entries speak perfectly to the V&A’s founding mission to support artists, embed design in everyday life, and showcase imaginative brilliance.”

Ann Kiernan has been awarded the Moira Gemmill Illustrator of the Year and the Illustrated Journalism Award 2020. Kiernan’s winning illustration was commissioned by independent global media platform Open Democracy, to accompany an article by Wael Eskandar, entitled "How Twitter is gagging Arabic users and acting as morality police'.

Student Illustrator of the Year was awarded to Sally Dunne for "Home in Kakuma Refugee Camp", with the runner-up prize going to Vyara Boyadjieva for "The Wave" (Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge School of Art), described by the judges as a scene of "infectious joy".

Anglia Ruskin and Cambridge University student Kate Winter was highly commended for her picture book Lascaux, alongside fellow student Laura Winstone for The Catmolean Musuem picture book. Royal College of Art student Ruo Hsin Wu was also highly commended for her "thought-provoking" work, Starring Night.

The awards, which are supported by the Enid Linder Foundation and the Moira Gemmill Memorial Fund, were judged this year by Hunt, playwright and novelist Bonnie Greer, c.e.o. of the Association of Illustrators Ren Renwick, Folio Society art director Sheri Gee and past winner and illustrator Yehrin Tong.

The prize money for each of the four awards categories is £3,000, with the Moira Gemmill Illustrator of the Year Prize worth an additional £5,000. The student runner-up prize recipients will receive £2,000. This year’s winners were selected from a shortlist, drawn from over 800 entries. Previous winners of the awards include Nora Krug, John Vernon Lord, Sir Quentin Blake, Ralph Steadman, Posy Simmonds, Sara Fanelli and Yasmeen Ismail.

The prize money for each of the four awards categories is £3,000, and the Moira Gemmill Illustrator of the Year Prize is worth an additional £5,000. The student runner-up prize is £2,000. This year’s shortlist was drawn from over 800 entries. Previous winners of the Illustration Awards include Nora Krug, John Vernon Lord, Sir Quentin Blake, Ralph Steadman, Posy Simmonds, Sara Fanelli, and Yasmeen Ismail.