The 2016 Jarman Award Touring Programme
Please note: This was screened in Oct 2016
Inspired by visionary filmmaker Derek Jarman, the Jarman Award recognises and supports artists working with moving image and celebrates the spirit of experimentation, imagination and innovation in the work of artist filmmakers. And this year's shortlist is no exception. Expect to see a diverse and thought-provoking programme of artists’ moving image and hear from Cécile B. Evans, one of the six shortlisted artists for this year’s award, who'll be taking part in a Q&A.
The shortlisted artists’ accomplishments span single-screen works and immersive gallery installations, animation and intricate CGI techniques to found footage sourced from YouTube. Their subjects range from memory and sound, future worlds and forgotten landscapes, the glitz of Gulf culture, pulsing beats of pop with dazzling montages of consumerism and the effect of new technology on human behaviour. Together, the artists selected for this year’s Jarman Award provide an important insight into the very best moving image artists working in the UK today.
The 2016 Jarman Award Shortlisted Artists and schedule:
Part One
Hyperlinks or It Didn’t Happen (Dir. Cécile B. Evans, 2014, UK, 22 min)
Cécile B. Evans' interest in human emotions and generative digital processes are expressed in her uncanny animations. Highly stylised avatars and internet oddities speak with each other and to the viewer with simulated voices, including a representation of a well known actor and Agnes, a presence who lives on the Serpentine Gallery website.
The Watcher # 1 (Dir. Sophia Al Maria, 2014, 6min) / Choque (Dir. Sophia Al Maria, 2014, UK, 5min)
Sophia Al Maria's work is an evocation of contemporary Arab culture and the glitz and hypocrisy of an oil rich Gulf with its shopping malls, marble interiors and sci-fi monoliths. Through a mixture of YouTube rips and home movie style footage Al Maria explores a hypermodern, globalised culture that brings with it a sense of ethical and environmental anxiety.
Please Sir... (Dir. Rachel Maclean, 2014, UK, 25 min)
Rachel Maclean creates bizarre and nightmarish Alice in Wonderland worlds filmed in candy colours, where all the characters are played by the artist. Using clips of found sound - anything from TV talent contests to skin cream adverts and soap operas - Maclean’s film collages are grotesque and violent satires, both seductive and repulsive. Maclean will represent Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2017.
Part Two
Children of Unquiet (Dir. Mikhail Karikis, 2014, UK,16 min)
Mikhail Karikis creates immersive installations born of a long-standing investigation of the voice as a sculptural material and a socio-political agent. Karikis’ projects are the result of an engagement with marginal landscapes and communities, from aging pearl divers in Korea to the marshland of the Isle of Grain in South East England via an uninhabited workers’ village in Italy and miners’ choirs of the Welsh valleys. His work is on show at the Whitstable Biennale this summer.
Final Days (Dir. Heather Phillipson, 2015, UK, 22min)
Heather Phillipson' s videos speak of the contemporary experience of consumption, production and overflow through a car crash of images, colours, noise and language. Phillipson creates vast playful sculptures to house her video work, featuring plastic dogs on trampolines, wheelbarrows, and giant feet.
216 Westbound (Dir. Shona Illingoworth, 2014, UK, 17 min)
Shona Illingworth's elegiac films and installations often stem from her longstanding interest in emerging models of memory and from growing up in a dramatic and contested landscape. They combine imagery of striking landscapes with the experiences of people who went through life-changing events, which altered their relationship with the world around them.
The winner of the Jarman Award will be announced on 28 November 2016 at a special ceremony at the Whitechapel Gallery and receive a £10,000 prize. The Award is supported by Channel 4, who commissioned each of the shortlisted artists to produce a new film for their acclaimed Random Acts arts strand.