Jerwood/FVU Awards 2022 travels to Leeds Art Gallery for the first time, open to the public from 18 November 2022 – 22 January 2023. The exhibition in Leeds will introduce new elements to the artists’ presentations, building on their shows at Jerwood Space earlier this year.
Awardees Soojin Chang and Michael. have taken an exciting and challenging approach to ideas of difference and inclusion. In Soojin Chang’s case, BXBY is a radical, semi-fictional work which explores the fusion of interspecies life. Michael.’s installation cleave to the BLACK depicts through a moving-image triptych, the continuing legacy of Black male experience.
For this new installation at Leeds Art Gallery, Michael. will be co-curating an exhibition of artworks from Leeds Art Gallery’s collection, responding to themes in his work cleave to the BLACK, including the question ‘What would it be like to live on a land that loves you back?’. Artist and collaborator Ashley Holmes has produced a new sound work that will play in the space.
cleave to the BLACK echoes the art-historical tradition of the painted triptych in a three-screen video projection that offers a panoramic perspective on the legacies of the past that continue to leave an indelible mark on contemporary Black male experience. Alluding to episodes from the Bible and stories from African folklore and cosmology, the piece brings a subtle overtone of parable and myth to its carefully composed and quietly haunting scenes. Made in close dialogue with a group of Black men from different London communities, cleave to the BLACK is a work of authentic, personal expression and evocative, atmospheric poetry.
Soojin Chang’s Jerwood/FVU Awards 2022 commissioned film BXBY will be exhibited off-site at the Project Space in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, hosted by the Centre for Audio Visual Experimentation (CAVE).
BXBY features explicit content of a deer being culled and cervical self-experimentation. Therefore, Leeds Art Gallery has reached the decision to show this work offsite as their high number of family visitors would be precluded from viewing the film. By working in partnership with University of Leeds, Leeds Art Gallery has created a dedicated screening space for BXBY with an associated engagement programme for student and general audiences.
In addition to screening BXBY at CAVE, there will also be new work by Soojin premiering at Leeds Art Gallery. Sacrifice to the Seaworm is a new multi-part film installation that remaps an interior landscape to the processing of pain and violence through the vehicle of sacrificial practices. Formed collaboratively with Tenzin Mingyur Paldron (writer) and Jade O’Belle (artist), the exhibition features Tenzin’s work on self-immolation and suffering, which follows a historic letter and parable shared by peace activist and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh and the actions of 170 Tibetans.
The Leeds iteration of the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2022 marks the final edition of the awards in its present form after ten years of commissioning early-career artists. The awards have established an esteemed role in the contemporary visual arts, by awarding £25,000 for artists to develop new artworks at a pivotal moment in their practice. Selection of the awards this year was made by a panel of experts, including award-winning visual artists Hetain Patel and Rehana Zaman.
Find out more
Read more about the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2022.
