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Jerwood Arts’ Annual Report 2022 by Chairman Rupert Tyler and Director Lilli Geissendorfer
We look back on a year of exciting new beginnings and endings at Jerwood Arts.
From 2023, all our exhibitions will be delivered in partnership with galleries, museums and visual arts organisations across the UK, so our funding will go further and reach more exceptional early-career artists. This follows our announcement in April 2022 that this would be the final year of running an exhibitions and events programme at our headquarters at Jerwood Space in London.
We were proud to deliver three major new exhibitions. Jerwood Art Fund Makers Open kicked off the year with five extraordinary new commissions going on to tour to Newlyn Art Gallery and Aberdeen Art Gallery, where the exhibition closes on 25 February 2023. Jerwood/FVU Awards 2022 premiered two new commissions by filmmakers Soojin Chang and Michael., and their works were then reimagined for presentation at Leeds Art Gallery which runs until 22 January 2023.
Right: Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 4. Photos by Hydar Dewachi.
In the autumn of 2022 we presented new bodies of work by photographers Joanne Coates and Heather Agyepong, commissioned through the fourth Jerwood/Photoworks Awards. We also commissioned four new Jerwood Staging Series events, which brought new voices and work to celebrate the final few months of our gallery programme. Out on the road, Survey II continued to impress audiences at Site Gallery in Sheffield.
These exhibitions mark the culmination of 18 years of continuous support for early-career artists to realise new works at Jerwood Space. Under the leadership of three Directors, we have realised 118 exhibitions and projects which have featured over 250 major new works and countless events as part of our public programme. They represent over 1700 bold artists, 75 touring partners, and many more individuals involved in identifying, nurturing and promoting artistic excellence in the visual arts.
This year also had a focus on evaluation, as we shared insights from across our programmes including a 1:1 FUND event on random selection and the independent evaluation of our Live Work Fund. Building on our learning allows us to sharpen our funding offer for organisations and individuals, ensuring we continue to stay open and accessible.
The Jerwood Developing Artists Fund launched in the summer, offering arts organisations a pathway to apply for funding to support artist-focused development programmes. Through this we were excited to support 14 organisations across art forms in the first two rounds culminating in a major announcement in December. Opportunities for artists to apply to the programmes have already begun. Outburst Arts’ TONGUE + HEART programme for queer performance artists in Northern Ireland have announced their selected artists, CCA Derry~Londonderry have announced the Research Associates for Jerwood Arts x CCA = Support, while New Diorama’s radical Intervention 01, has created time and space for theatre makers to make new work. This key fund enables arts organisations to carve out critical time and space for the most promising early-career artists to make significant strides forward.
Alongside this we renewed the Jerwood New Work Fund, offering grants for artists who had received Jerwood Arts support since March 2020. The fund answers the ‘what next’ question that artists completing structured opportunities often pose – full of new skills, confidence and ambition for their ideas. The grants allow them to develop their own projects and networks to ensure the successful commissioning and production of bold new work. An announcement of the first round of recipients will be made later this January.
2022 also marked our third edition of the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships which has supported nine Fellows since 2017 to stretch the boundaries and definitions of poetry in the UK with their outstanding work. Poets Romalyn Ante, Dzifa Benson and Jamie Hale celebrated their achievements with Fellows from previous editions at two special events in September. We were especially pleased that 2019/20 Fellows Yomi Ṣode and Anthony Joseph were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize for the collections they wrote during their Fellowship year, and Anthony was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize.
Elsewhere, Jerwood Arts supported artists were being recognised for their work across a range of awards and prizes. Interdisciplinary artist Heather Phillipson (Jerwood Encounters TTTT and Artist Adviser) was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Writer Dylan Huw (Jerwood Writer in Residence), performance artist Rhys Slade-Jones (Live Work Fund) and interdisciplinary artist Fern Thomas (Jerwood Bursaries) were selected as Future Wales Fellows. The Art Foundation Future Awards finalists included singer-song writer Eliza Shaddad (Live Work Fund), vocalist Hanna Tuulikki (Magnetic North Artist Attachment), visual artist Sadé Mica (Survey II) and multidisciplinary artist Shenece Oretha (Survey II), and visual artist Libita Sibungu (Jerwood Newlyn Residency) and moving image artist Savinder Bual (Jerwood Bursaries) were awarded in their categories. Opera singer Patrick Alexander Keefe (Glyndebourne Jerwood Young Artist) won the John Christie Award. Jasmine Gardosi (Jerwood Bursaries) became Birmingham’s Poet Laureate. Dance and film maker Zinzi Minott (Live Work Fund), installation and film maker Onyeka Igwe (Staging Series) and visual artist Rebecca Bellantoni (Jerwood Bursaries) were all shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women.
The fourth edition of Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries, our £2.5m programme to transform the future leadership of the arts delivered in partnership with people make it work saw the 50 Fellows complete their 12-month roles. They undertook mentoring with sector leaders and received support with their next steps, including micro-grants to pursue their own projects. In partnership with the British Council, 40 of the Fellows took the unique opportunity to visit Madrid, Athens, Milan and Dublin to explore transnational connections and the arts scene in different countries. The next edition of the Toolkit for socio-economic inclusion started to take shape with a vision to amplify Fellows’ voices on what an inclusive workplace means to them and how organisations can provide more robust support, set to be released in March 2023.
We also launched Jerwood Curatorial Accelerator, a brand-new development programme which responds to the lack of diversity in curatorial leadership in the UK. The eleven Fellows kicked off the 12-month programme with visits to Dundee Contemporary Arts, Turner Contemporary and MIMA, supporting them to develop new research, networks and knowledge of visual arts practice across the UK.
We would like to give profound thanks to our dedicated team and trustees for all their work over 2022. We would also like to thank the wide range of individuals and organisations we have worked with behind the scenes, from freelance project managers and event planners to PR agencies and HR consultants. They have provided crucial capacity and expertise during a very full year.
2022 was a year full of exciting new beginnings and outstanding achievements. We are thrilled to have started so many new partnerships and initiatives. This further broadens our spectrum of support for an even wider range of early-career artists, enabling Jerwood Arts to continue to be a powerful independent advocate and champion in this arena.
We look forward to 2023.
Rupert Tyler, Chairman
Lilli Geissendorfer, Director
