We sat down with one of the 2015 Jerwood/Photoworks Awards winners, Matthew Finn, to discuss his practice, working process and outlook after being selected.
Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 2015
Each artist has received an award of £5,000 to support the making of new work for exhibition, with a significant production fund and mentoring support. The three artists will present their work in a group exhibition as part of the Jerwood Visual Arts programme which will open at Jerwood Space in November 2015 and tour to other partner venues including Impressions Gallery, Bradford.
Matthew uses the people and events directly surrounding his life as visual references for projects that sometimes take years to realise. Embarking on his Jerwood/Photoworks Awards project he planned to use the archive of his project Mother and recreate photographs, setting his wife in her own domestic environment to see how the images might change for the protagonists and for the viewer.
Matthew Finn
PW: What does winning a Jerwood/Photoworks Award mean to you?
MF: Winning a JPA15 Award for me has been a fantastic opportunity to realise my work and to put the work into the world and see what people think of it. Really, why I make the work is to have it shown, to get a reaction and I’ll be really fascinated to see what people think of it and to see what I’ve been working on.
The work will come to a conclusion and for me the full stop is to put it out there and see it actually on the wall and communicate my ideas to an audience. It’s really exciting but almost slightly nerve-wracking as well as the work is quite personal but I’m really looking forward to it.
PW: What are you working on now?
MF: I’m developing my series Mother further, and we’re just looking now at how to realise it, we’re looking at production, we’re looking at scale and what we’re actually going to do with the work and different ways of presenting it and continuing the work. We may also look at developing slightly different angles to see how best we can present the work.
PW: How has your practice developed already?
MF: Through the mentoring programme as part of the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards, I’ve had meetings with Broomberg & Chanarin and Lucy Moore and they’ve given me confidence by showing me different ideas and takes on the work and how it might be realised and received. The process has also given me a sense of the importance of doing it right and getting it right, so it makes the work stronger.
It’s been really wonderful to have the option of talking to these people who are very influential and incredibly generous with their time and their comments. It’s quite an exciting journey to be on together and I’m looking forward to that new collaboration.
© Matthew Finn, Untitled originally commissioned through Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 2015, from the series Mother (1987-present)
Matthew Finn (b 1970 United Kingdom) has been working as a photography lecturer at West London University. He received an MA in Photography from Westminster University in 2007.
Matthew uses the people and events directly surrounding his life as visual references for projects that sometimes take years to realise. For his proposed Jerwood/Photoworks Awards project he intends to use the archive of his project Mother and recreate photographs, setting his wife in her own domestic environment to see how the images may change for the protagonists and for the viewer.
© Matthew Finn, Untitled originally commissioned through Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 2015, from the series Mother (1987-present)
Click here to see more of Matthew’s work on our own site, or visit mattfinn.com
To see Matthew’s Instagram Takeover for Photoworks, click here.
Find out more about the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards and the other 2015 winners here.
