The four moving- image artists selected for the second edition of the Jerwood/Film and Video Umbrella Awards are Lucy Clout, Kate Cooper, Anne Haaning and Marianna Simnett.
In response to the curatorial brief and its title ‘What Will They See of Me?’, their four proposals explore the themes of identity, visibility and posterity in ways that both embrace and interrogate new technology and express a strong and compelling performative impulse.
The four artists were selected from a list of over 150 submissions by a panel of six experts in the field: artist Ed Atkins, who was previously selected for the first edition of the Jerwood/Film and Video Umbrella Awards; Steven Bode, Director of Film and Video Umbrella; Shonagh Manson, Director of Jerwood Charitable Foundation; Francis McKee, Director of CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; Sarah Williams, Jerwood Visual Arts Gallery Manager and Catherine Wood, Curator of Contemporary Art & Performance at Tate Modern.
They will go on to research and develop their project ideas with a £4,000 bursary and production support from Film and Video Umbrella and will present their pilot pieces in an exhibition at Jerwood Visual Arts in March 2014. Two of the four artists will then be selected to develop their ideas into finished works with a £20,000 commission each and further support from Film and Video Umbrella. The completed pieces will then be exhibited at Jerwood Visual Arts, London and CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow in 2015.
Steven Bode, Director of Film and Video Umbrella, said: ‘The response to this new edition of the Jerwood/Film and Video Umbrella Awards indicates both the level of interest and the strength in depth of artists’ moving image in the UK. The panel was struck by the breadth of talent and range of approaches to the project theme. We are especially excited by the proposals of the four artists selected, and we look forward to helping develop their projects over the next few months. It goes without saying that we will be seeing a lot more of these artists in the future…”
Lucy Clout
Lucy Clout’s project will investigate the background noise of modern communication, and those examples of so-called ‘minor speech’ that are everywhere around us but do not always capture our attention. As if to remind us that it is often the casual, off-guard remark that lingers longest in the memory, she will look more closely at some of the more peripheral aspects of our contemporary technological vernacular, and look back at how some of the overlooked products of earlier eras have acquired a strange, unruly afterlife.
Lucy Clout’s previous work has investigated the experience of viewing performance, interrogating the communicative aspects of the physical and social relationships between the audience and the art-object/performer. She graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Sculpture in 2009, and has exhibited in commercial and non-commercial spaces in the UK and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include International Project Space, Birmingham and Limoncello, London.
Kate Cooper
Kate Cooper is interested in how our everyday performance is produced online and how in turn this might relate to ideas of gender. What are the new forms of agency now available as we edit and post produce an online archive of our own bodies? Her project investigates the potential for self-invention that our relationships to our own images produce and the complex ways in which images of the self are used to accrue a new kind of ‘capital’.
Kate Cooper is an artist and co-founder of London-based artist-run initiative Auto Italia, which she began in 2007, after graduating from Central Saint Martins. She has exhibited in the UK and internationally including screenings and performances at Tate Modern, ICA and Artissima Art Fair. Cooper frequently undertakes collaborative projects, working with multiple other artists, and the Jerwood/Film and Video Umbrella Awards will be one of her first solo endeavours.
Anne Haaning
Anne Haaning’s project considers the marks we inadvertently leave in digital space and the records that we choose to make to document personal journeys. Alluding to the shifting sands of the desert, and the backdrop of a mythological historical past, her proposed work will experiment with the idea of digital ghosts, whose identity and meaning is forever changing, and who will eventually outnumber and outlive us.
Originally an MA graduate in Architecture, Anne Haaning will graduate from her MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths in 2014. She has been exhibiting in group shows
internationally since 2009, and will have a solo exhibition at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen in 2014.
Marianna Simnett
Continuing the interplay between animality and domestication that distinguishes much of her work, Marianna Simnett’s proposal revolves around the image of an udder as a symbol of innocence and abundance. All is not quite what it seems, however, as the piece develops into a wider reflection on our desire for pristine, virginal images of nature and our knowledge that these images, like milk itself, are not always inherently ‘natural’ but often the product of a complex system of technological manufacture.
Marianna Simnett graduated from the Slade School of Art with an MA in Fine Art Media in 2013. She has exhibited in group shows in the UK and internationally.
The Jerwood/Film and Video Umbrella Awards are major awards for moving- image artists in the first five years of their practice, presented in partnership by Jerwood Visual Arts and Film and Video Umbrella.