Artworks by Sophia Rehman and Scarlett Tooze (both Painting BA [Hons] 2026), were purchased as part of the 2026 University of Edinburgh Art Collection Graduate Show Purchase prize, awarded to a small number of graduating artists every year since 2012.

As recipients of the prize, they were awarded a fixed fee in exchange for their work, with each of the artists engaging with the Art Collection curatorial team to decide on the aspects of their Graduate Show that would be collected.

The selection of the 2026 prize recipients was made by University Heritage Collections staff, specifically the Art Collection’s Curator and Collections Management colleagues.

Art Collections Curator, Julie-Ann Delaney said: “It has been an immense privilege to work with Sophia and Scarlett on the acquisition of their works for the Collection. Hearing more about their practices, and guiding them through their first institutional acquisition, has been a hugely gratifying and special experience. We look forward to integrating the works into teaching, research and display plans, and to continuing our conversations with each of the artists as they take the next steps in their careers.”

Sophia Rehman - BA (Hons) Painting

The Art Collection has acquired three paintings by artist Sophia Rehman. 

Exploring South Asian identity and diaspora in the UK, Sophia makes paintings that bring together personal memories and collaged imagery to consider the visual languages and symbols of British and South Asian cultures. Images and motifs were lifted from books, found and personal photographs, as well as other printed sources and then worked on through collage and drawings which the artist considers as ‘composition generators’, from which she can pull elements into her final paintings. The resulting works are described by Sophia as depicting "imagined scenarios" situated within recognisable cultural settings where the characters "live out fantasies which are potentially antisocial but too fantastical to be mistaken for stereotypes which British Asian people are actually stigmatised as doing."

Each of the three paintings acquired for the Collection are produced on unstretched canvas, with the raw edges of the material exposed. Two feature tassels, usually the first element of the making process undertaken and deliberately tied by the artist with difference to avoid allusion to one specific object. Evocative of scarves, shawls, rugs or curtains, Sophia is interested in the viewer’s impulse to read them as specifically "South Asian" and thereby question the racialised expectations that can shape the reception and interpretation of art by artists of colour. Other familiar motifs - paisley, domestic furniture, refences to the Jungle Book - become vehicles through which she considers how cultural references move between South Asian and British contexts. Growing racial tensions and colonial legacies are alluded to through the representation of the Union Jack and St George’s Cross across a range of her paintings.

Scarlett Tooze - BA (Hons) Painting

The Art Collection has acquired two preparatory studies and two final works from a wider nine-part series You Are Red And Blue by Scarlett Tooze.

Scarlett describes the series as being "founded in the methodologies of weaving," a practice which became significant for the artist after an exchange period in Toronto, Canada where she was introduced to the loom. Rather than simply adopting traditional weaving techniques, she became interested in the structures and language of the loom, experimenting with ways of deconstructing its mechanisms and translating them into her own practice.

In each of the works from the series, a run of string tied to a series of nails overlays a framed collaged image of a surreal constructed space. Suspended within the strings is a cut-out photograph of a figure posing (fellow student Evie Blue Ukairo who features across the series), positioned to read as simultaneously in the foreground and background. Constructed through various methods of layering, the works carry an uncanny sensation and unsettling atmosphere.  

In describing the series Scarlett, said: "I wanted to think of ways to replicate [an] un-enterable window of liminal space that a stage provides, giving these poised figures […] a dream-like quality." 

Her interest in theatre design stems from a particular fascination with Powell and Pressburger’s 1948 film The Red Shoes, which led her to research and explore theatrical sets, dancers and the dreamlike qualities of staged environments. This also extends into her aim to investigate the uncanny sensation of being observed and how this can dwell in the subconscious.  

University of Edinburgh Art Collection

The University of Edinburgh has been engaged with the practices of commissioning, purchasing and displaying the work of artists for nearly 350 years.

The present-day Art Collection is comprised of two institutional collections – the University of Edinburgh Fine Art Collection and the Edinburgh College of Art Collection. Now amounting to nearly 8,000 artworks spanning two millennia, the collection is divided into twelve named sub-collections.

Alongside commissioning new work, displaying the collection across campus, and lending to external venues, greater emphasis is now placed on the acquisition and use of artworks in the support and development of research and teaching.

• All photos by Cultural Heritage Digitisation Service, University of Edinburgh