Award-Winning

And the Jarman goes to…(drumroll please)! The winner is only to be announced on November 23rd but, we thought we would stir things up now. The coveted £10,000 award recognizes the pioneering work of the UK’s leading artist filmmakers. This year’s shortlist contains the six most talented film visionaries of 2021. Care to know who they are…. thought you’d never ask. Discover more on today’s Award-Winning.

The Film London Jarman Award is a renowned yearly prize that recognizes and promotes the most inventive UK-based artists working with moving image. It honours the spirit of exploration, imagination, and invention in young artist filmmakers’ work.

The Jarman Award, founded in 2008 and inspired by visionary director Derek Jarman, aims to provide financial support and the rare opportunity to create a new moving image production.

From the personal and autobiographical to the global and political, the films immerse us in their stories through elegiac poetry, experimental music, bizarre computer graphics, performance, dance, and choreography. Recent works by the nominated artists give migrant labour a voice, reflect on colonial concerns, create imaginary futures, investigate the exotic and occult, and track the therapeutic qualities of plants across history.

In the run-up to the event, art and cinema enthusiasts may explore the work of the nominated artists online via a number of its cultural venue partner websites, including the Whitechapel Gallery website. On the 13th and 14th of November, Whitechapel Gallery will host a weekend of screenings, conversations, and performances involving all six nominated artists.

So who are this year’s nominees? The artists selected for 2021’s shortlist are:

• Adham Faramawy

Adham Faramawy works in a range of media, including computer programs, moving image, and applications to print. Their camera performance movies are frequently displayed as part of sculptural assemblages.

The pieces investigate how social issues get intertwined with environmental concerns. They convey stories about consumerism, identity formation, the body, and the nature of desire via movement, poetry, spoken word, and dance.

• Georgina Starr

Georgina Starr creates films, soundscapes, and large-scale installation pieces with an emphasis on feminine identity, the otherworldly, and her long-standing fascination with the visionary qualities of experimental filmmaking.

Extensive periods of research precede her endeavours, which usually include writing scripts, fictions, lectures, music, and poems.

• Guy Oliver

Guy Oliver’s moving image work is steeped in self-portraiture and examines concepts of masculinity, identity, humour, and tragedy in a profoundly intimate but irreverent working style. The work incorporates and then dissects several aspects of popular culture, including movies, sports, politics, popular music, stand-up comedy, and art history.

• Jasmina Cibic

Jasmina Cibic explores how ideas and cultures are formed and subsequently presented via mechanisms such as art and architecture in her oeuvre, which spans performance, installation, and cinema. Her work investigates how national culture and may be utilized for political purposes, as well as other types of soft power.

• Larry Achiampong

Larry Achiampong’s solo and collaborative work use auditory and visual archives, live performance, and sound to investigate issues of class, cross-cultural identification, and post-digital identity. Achiampong’s art delves into his community and personal history.

• Sophia Al-Maria

Sophia Al-Maria’s films investigate postcolonial identity, imperialism, and counter-histories by fusing music, literature, oral history, film, and dance. Her broken, nonlinear work is frequently set against a science fiction backdrop and tackles the rewriting of history, the isolation of humans through technology, and the destructive components of consumerism and industry.

What about the venue? The Award is presented in association with the Whitechapel Gallery. For more than a century, the Whitechapel Gallery has showcased world-class artists ranging from Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Frida Kahlo, and Hannah Höch to contemporary artists such as Zarina Bhimji, Sophie Calle, William Kentridge, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Michael Rakowitz.

Exhibitions, artist commissions, collection displays, historic records, teaching resources, inspirational art courses, lectures and film screenings, the Townsend dining room, and the Koenig Bookshop are all housed on its historic site.

This event a worldwide touchstone for contemporary art, that plays an important role in London’s cultural environment, and is critical to the continuing expansion of the world’s most active contemporary art district. Keep an eye out for the winner’s announcement. You don’t want to miss out. If you enjoyed reading Award-Winning then why not read Timber.