Katharina Fitz

Standpoint is delighted to announce Katharina Fitz as the winner of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award 2026-27.

Fitz, who lives and works in Nottingham, is the 24th winner of the annual sculpture prize and receives: £10,000 towards the production of new work over the coming year; a funded solo exhibition at Standpoint in 2027; and a National Touring Programme.

Katharina Fitz works in sculpture and installation. She takes inspiration from the spaces that surround us, examining the structures and infrastructures that connect and support, uncovering site-specific histories, and considering how people physically navigate their environment through motion and touch.

She pays close attention to everyday actions such as opening doors, pressing buttons, stacking objects, or activating mechanisms of push and pull. Repeated over time, these gestures leave subtle traces, scratches, smudges, and impressions that quietly record how we navigate space. These marks become a starting point, translating touch, friction, and repetition into a sculptural language.

Fitz returns to the body as a way of understanding form: how materials carry weight, how surfaces behave like skin, and how internal elements support like bones. She is drawn to the way forms bend, lean, hug, or rest, and how these gestures shape the way materials are joined or held together.

Today’s culture strives for optimisation, while our surroundings often feel polished, slick, and impersonal. Fitz sees her work as a counterpoint, a more human representation of life, with its imperfections and provisionality. Her sculptures radiate a raw and unfinished atmosphere, revealing the energy and expressive qualities of materials whilst sharing glimpses of the behind the scenes of construction.

By drawing parallels between the gestures of the sculptor and those of everyday life, her work draws attention to how we activate the spaces we inhabit, and how those spaces in turn shape the way we know and move through the world.

The Mark Tanner Sculpture Award is the most significant award for emerging UK artists working in the field of sculpture. It seeks to reward outstanding and innovative practice, with a particular interest in work that demonstrates a commitment to process, or sensitivity to material.

Katharina was selected from over 340 entries by a judging panel comprising: Holly Hendry, Artist; Melanie Pocock, Artistic Director (Exhibitions), Ikon Gallery; Rebecca Scott, Director, Cross Lane Projects and Mark Tanner Trust; and Clara Hastrup, MTSA winner 2025/26.

Katharina Fitz has an MFA Fine Art from Nottingham Trent University, UK, and a Photography and Film degree from Instituto Sant Ignasi, Barcelona, Spain. Recent solo shows include: Backbone, StudioBlockM74, Mexico City, MX (2025); IN FLUX, Kunsthalle FRO, Dornbirn, AT (2024); and When Seams Become Audible, One Thoresby Street, Nottingham, UK (2020).

She was winner of the Ingram Prize, Ingram Collection, UK (2021), and the Gilbert Bayes Sculpture Award, Royal Society of Sculptors, UK (2020), and took part in Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2019). Her work is held in Art Collection Vorarlberg, AT (2025), and she received the LCB Depot Commission, Catch and Release I, II (2021).