Winners of the Visitors' Choice Award 2010

Clee Hill near Ludlow is a popular stopping point for travellers... We make a detour whenever we’re near... It seems to have something different to offer every time we go.’

Recipients of the £10,000 Visitors’ Choice award, husband and wife artists Fionnuala Boyd and Les Evans, work in Milton Keynes, where they have been living since 1980, when they took up a residency in the new city.

Boyd & Evans create paintings from photographs, where perspective and scale are heavily altered to produce surreal effects, and to investigate ideas about representation. Clee Hill 2009 is an example of this, as the pools of water in the lower half of the canvas reflect distorted images of the sky above. Their paintings often include art historical references and are a composite of real and fictional scenes.

Clee Hill 2009, depicting a barren landscape in Shropshire after heavy rain, was also selected by both Jeremy Paxman and Matthew Collings for the Critics’ View event earlier in the exhibition, where four celebrated critics were invited to choose their favourite work of art on display, and deliver a short speech about it to an audience of gallery visitors. Working together since 1968, the pair have artwork in several public collections, including Tate and MoMA.