Winners 2026 / EdilImpianti Prize

About the project

The Burnthouse Lane urban housing estate was first dreamt up by Exeter Council in the idealistic 1920s in the UK to rehouse impoverished people from the West Quarter slum. Designed along Garden City lines and purposely self-contained it was a place for working-class families to live. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy scheme meant that some of the properties became privately owned, but Burnt House Lane is still referred to as a council estate. The deprivation it was supposed to overcome has continued to haunt it, but the isolated nature of the estate and its intricate labyrinth of lanes, have also made for positives, such as a close-knit community and a sense of solidarity among the residents.

It is this positivity that I wanted to highlight. I have always been drawn to this area because of the way it embraces diversity and the individuality that emanates from this – both in the way people express themselves but also how this is reflected in the adornment of their properties which for the most part have identical fabric, but which are charged with a personal stamp in the gardens, in the windows and even in the wall faces – my use of strong colour and light accentuating this sense of celebration.

This methodology is part of the politics of the work where I try to emphasise beauty, dignity and presence in order to challenge the way these marginalised communities are typically represented.

About Michelle Sank

Michelle Sank was born in South Africa and settled in the UK in 1987. She cites this background as informing her interest in sub-cultures and the exploration of contemporary social issues and challenges. Her crafted portraits meld place and person creating sociological, visual and psychological landscapes and narratives.

Her photographs have been exhibited and published extensively in the UK, Europe, Australia and Mexico, South Africa and the U.S.A. Her imagery is held in the permanent collections of Allan Servais, Brussells, Open Eye Gallery Archive, Liverpool, Societe Jersiaise and Guernsey Museum, Channel Islands, Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, RAMM, Exeter and The Museum of Youth Culture, UK.

She has undertaken continuous commissions and residencies for prominent galleries and magazines in Europe and the USA and her work has won awards in numerous prestigious competitions including the Taylor Wessing Prize, The British Journal of Photography and the Photo Review international competition, and is a recipient of the Rapid Response Fund, The Contemporary Arts Society, UK for purchase of work from the series “Breathe” that she made during Covid.

Sank has four published books, The Water's Edge: Women on the Waterfront (Published by Liverpool University Press) – a study of women who worked and still work on Liverpool's Docks, Becoming: (Published by Belfast Exposed Photography and Ffotogallery,) – a major monograph featuring her youth portraits taken over five years accompanied by an essay by David Goldblatt The Submerged: about the landscape and inhabitants of Aberystwyth, Wales accompanied by an essay by Liz Wells (Published by Schilt Publishing) and My.Self: about the cultural identity amongst diverse young people in the Black Country – UK (Published by Multistory)