Saskia Jonquil with her work after the prize giving
Each year ncas awards a £500 prize to the best work by a fine art student in the degree show at Norwich University of the Arts . This year it was another tough decision for the ncas trustees on the judging panel. Having fairly unanimously chosen a shortlist of six, it was harder for the full group then to reach a final decision on the winner. But in the end we have chosen Saskia Jonquil and her set of four sculptures entitled Dirt Candy I – IV. Her cast bronze works of bio-organic forms, metamorphosed into sexually-resonant, imaginary constructions particularly attracted us, as did the immaculate, welded steels mountings. The runner-up was Ellie Davison-Archer, whose delicious and meticulous graphite studies of the minutiae of natural-history objects also charmed us. Brenda Ferris, the chair of ncas, awarded Saskia her prize in an informal ceremony at NUA just before the degree show opened on the 31st May, and she thanked Joseph Wang who had organized this year's prize process but who could not be at the ceremony.