"First prize winner Rob Tovey's photographs and books married a creative adventurousness with meticulous clarity with their rigorous analyses of spaces exploring, simultaneously, various conceptual representations, reconstructions and deconstructions."

"What an honour. So often you generate work, alone, and these ideas are recognised as being of some merit within your little niche. But that's it. What's rarer is for someone to say, do you know what - this is good. Not just to a small group of like minded people, but generally. And that's what the Searle Prize is - a wonderful, lovely, reassuring intellectual hug.

"The prize itself will let me extend my practice in ways that I couldn't have dreamt of before - better locations, better equipment, freedom!

"So I'd like to extend my gratitude to Mr Searle and the late, great Mr Ruskin too, and everyone at Anglia Ruskin University, particularly those at the constantly-evolving Cambridge School of Art."