A group exhibition of new photography enabled by the first national Jerwood/Photoworks Awards shows at Jerwood Space London, 4 November - 13 December 2015, touring to Impressions Gallery, Bradford 5 January - 19 March 2016 and Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool in Autumn 2016
Three artists were selected from a call for applications to UK based photography practitioners within ten years of establishing their practice. Each has received an award of £5,000 to support the making of new work for this exhibition, with a significant production fund and advice from a pool of thirteen Mentors including Alec Soth, Gillian Wearing, Broomberg & Chanarin and Michael Mack as well as curatorial advice from both of the award giving organisations.
‘The quality of the work is a testament not only to the individual skill of the artists featured, but to the value and urgency of initiatives like the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards in the UK’s current cultural and economic climate’ This is Tomorrow
Matthew Finn has been photographing his mother in a series of collaborative portraits since 1987. His Jerwood/Photoworks Award has enabled him to revisit this series at an emotional time that has seen his mother move from her family home into an assisted living residence. Matthew’s mother’s mental health has changed her role in the portraits from active participant to one of an observed subject; shifting the focus of his images towards objects and metaphor.
Joanna Piotrowska’s work explores anxiety and the effects of global and political events on the individual. In a series of portraits of adolescent girls recreating poses from self-defence manuals, Joanna counteracts a passive gender stereotype. She offers the viewer a reclamation of the private body from the public sphere, and re-contextualising these poses within a domestic setting, feeds our fascination with the unfamiliar, uncanny or the unheimlich.
Tereza Zelenkova has travelled to her native Czech Republic to explore themes of history, local legend and folklore. Tereza’s Jerwood/Photoworks Award enabled her to visit numerous locations, but the resulting images seem themselves out of place and time. Her eerily beautiful, black and white photographs of woodlands, stone structures and relics form their own dream-like, subconscious world, where stories fuel the viewer’s interpretation.
In a joint statement Celia Davies, Director of Photoworks and Shonagh Manson, Director of Jerwood Charitable Foundation said:
The Jerwood/Photoworks Awards are all about recognising future potential, supporting talented artists and their next steps. Working with our Awardees throughout the creative production process and seeing the ideas behind their projects develop into such strong bodies of work that may not otherwise have been made has been hugely rewarding. We’re looking forward to seeing where our Awardees’ career paths lead and to announcing the call for entries for the 2017 Jerwood/Photoworks Awards in autumn 2016.
Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 2015: Matthew Finn, Joanna Piotrowska, Tereza Zelenkova
4 November -13 December 2015
Jerwood Space, 171 Union Street, London SE1
Nearest tube: Southwark, Borough or London Bridge
‘The quality of the work is a testament not only to the individual skill of the artists featured, but to the value and urgency of initiatives like the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards in the UK’s current cultural and economic climate’ This is Tomorrow
‘The Jerwood/Photoworks Award showcases three photographers each using black and white photography in radically different ways’ The British Journal of Photography
Please click here for a PDF Press Release
For more information about the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 2015, to watch interviews with the selectors and read texts from the artists, click here.
For further reading and to see more of Matthew’s work, click here.
For more of Tereza’s work and information on her work, click here.
To see more of Joanna’s work, click here.
