Okiki Akinfe wins first £30,000 Dasha Shenkman prize at Frieze London

London artist Okiki Akinfe has won the inaugural £30,000 Dasha Shenkman Focus Fund prize at Frieze London 2026.

The award was announced on 15 October. It buys work straight from the fair for a British public collection, and Akinfe's is the first purchase made under the new fund The Art Newspaper.

Three works by Akinfe were chosen. They were shown on the stand of Ginny on Frederick, the London gallery representing the artist, in Focus, the section of Frieze dedicated to emerging artists.

The group centres on the figurative painting Fame is a Gun, made in 2026. It was the first acquisition made by the fund, according to reports from the fair Ocula. The group also includes a lightbox and a preparatory drawing.

The fund was launched by the Contemporary Art Society, the charity that buys art for public museums in Britain, to purchase work by an emerging artist in the Focus section. It is supported by philanthropist Dasha Shenkman and was set up to celebrate ten years of the society acquiring works for public institutions in the United Kingdom.

Frieze, the fair's organiser, published its own report on the acquisition on 14 October Frieze.

The works will enter the collection of Abbot Hall in Kendal, Cumbria, the public gallery in the north-west of England chosen as the first recipient. That means visitors there will be able to see them without a ticket to a commercial fair.

There were other collection prizes at Frieze week. The 2026 Tate Frieze Fund, a separate pot used by Tate in London to buy at the fair, enabled the purchase of Luis Fernando Zapata's Barge (1992) from Alonso Garcés Galería and Michaela Yearwood-Dan's Peace Unknown (2026) from Hauser & Wirth.

The Camden Art Centre Emerging Artist Award went to Ella Fleck for an installation presented with Ehrlich Steinberg gallery. Fleck will receive a solo show at Camden in 2027 as part of the award.