Anya Gallaccio named winner of the 2025 Robson Orr TenTen Award for the Government Art Collection

Scottish artist Anya Gallaccio has been named the recipient of the Robson Orr TenTen Award 2025, presented annually by the Government Art Collection. Her new work, Eight Hours of Whale Song, was unveiled in London by Museums and Cultural Property Minister Baroness Twycross, and — as Afisha.London reports — will join the national collection displayed across government buildings and embassies worldwide.

Established by philanthropists Sybil Robson Orr and Matthew Orr, the TenTen Award celebrates the dialogue between art and diplomacy. Each year, a British artist is commissioned to create a limited-edition print — some are exhibited in official spaces, while others are sold to raise funds for acquiring works by underrepresented artists. Over the past eight years, the initiative has added more than forty new works to the collection, including pieces by Sonia Boyce, Ingrid Pollard, and Barbara Walker.

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Gallaccio’s practice has long been rooted in transformation — she works with materials that melt, decay, or fade: ice, flowers, apples, trees. Her TenTen commission turns to sound, time, and the ocean. To create the piece, she played eight continuous hours of recorded whale song through a drum layered with pigment, watching the vibrations trace shifting patterns on its surface. These shapes were then translated into a relief print using pyrography — burning the image into wood. Each print bears a distinct texture and rhythm, as if the ocean itself had left its signature.

Unveiling of Anya Gallaccio, eight hours of whale song, 2025 for the Government Art Collection. (Left to right) Matthew and Sybil Robson Orr and Anya Gallaccio. Photot: David Parry / PA Media Assignments

“Diplomacy is communication — it’s about listening,” Gallaccio explains. “For an island nation, the ability to connect across oceans feels particularly urgent. I wanted this to be a tactile, physical object — with embossed, burnt, and raised areas — something that speaks through touch as much as through sight.”

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Her work reads as a quiet reflection on communication and empathy — suggesting that diplomacy begins not with words, but with the ability to listen. Eliza Gluckman, Director of the Government Art Collection, described the piece as “a meditation on connection and interdependence, a reminder that listening can be a form of diplomacy in itself.”

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Born in Paisley and raised between Glasgow and London, Gallaccio now divides her time between London and San Diego. Her art has been shown widely in the UK and internationally; her recent retrospective Preserve at Turner Contemporary traced three decades of her radical, environmentally aware practice. In 2027, her AIDS Memorial will be unveiled in London.

Eight Hours of Whale Song captures a rare harmony between nature, sound, and diplomacy — a quiet gesture in a noisy world, reminding us that the future may depend not on how loudly we speak, but on how deeply we listen.

Cover photo: David Parry / PA Media Assignments 

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