Maeve Brennan and Imran Perretta Announced as Winners of the 2018 Jerwood/FVU Awards

Maeve Brennan and Imran Perretta have been announced as the winners of the fifth edition of the Jerwood/FVU Awards, beating more than 170 other applicants. Each artist will receive GBP 20,000 (USD 25,500) to develop new moving-image works. The finished films will be shown from April 6 to June 3, 2018 at Jerwood Space, London, before touring across the United Kingdom.

Both artists employ the medium of film. Twenty-seven-year-old Maeve Brennan is based in London and Beirut, and uses her proposed work emphasizes the “whirring presence” of wind turbines, examining their ripple effects on the ecosystem. The wind turbines can produce unforeseeable results, reminding viewers of the connectedness of nature’s rhythms and patterns. Imran Perretta was born in 1988 in London, and received his MFA at Slade School of Fine Art in 2014. The artist’s planned work examines how refugees and migrants are de-humanized and demonized, by contrasting the personal stories of asylum seekers with public perceptions and popular iconography.

The Jerwood/FVU Awards are a collaboration between the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Film and Video Umbrella (FVU), with support from the University of East London, School of Arts and Digital Industries. FVU is backed by the Arts Council England. The award’s 2018 curatorial theme is “Unintended Consequences,” which is designed to be a response in an era when “world events are so volatile and turbulent that it’s hard to predict what might happen next.” Candidates were asked to address “how the best-laid plans can unravel and well-intentioned actions can provoke unexpected side-effects.” Steven Bode, director of FVU and a member of the award’s selection panel, comments that Brennan and Perretta’s proposals show “a reflection of the depth of talent” in the United Kingdom, while George Vasey, another juror who is also the curator of the 2017 Turner Prize, called the winners’ proposals “rigorous, considered and prescient.”

Many recipients of the Jerwood/FVU Awards’ previous editions gained further critical recognition following their exhibitions at Jerwood Space. These include 2013 winner Ed Atkins, who had his first solo exhibition at MoMA, New York, in the same year, and has gone on to exhibit at Serpentine Galleries and Kunsthalle Zurich. 2017 winner Lawrence Lek participated in group shows at Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art and HyperPavilion, a large-scale exhibition coinciding with the 57th Venice Biennale; Lek will be a participating artist at this autumn’s Hull UK City of Culture.

Jia Dong is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.

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