We have created this online exhibition walkthrough of our current exhibition Jerwood Solo Presentations 2021, to give a sense of how the three distinctive commissions by Emii Alrai, Freya Dooley and Bryony Gillard occupy the galleries at Jerwood Space.
Diverse in content and materials these new commissions span sculpture, installation, moving image and sound; with each artist taking over a whole gallery to present their ideas.
Jerwood Solo Presentations 2021 runs until 17 July 2021, there are multiple ways to engage with the exhibition online, including:
- a video of the artists in conversation with curator Harriet Cooper, watch now.
- artist takeovers on the Jerwood Arts Instagram, follow us.
- reading lists by each of the artists presenting the research and ideas that informed their commissions; Emii Alrai’s reading list, Freya Dooley’s reading list, Bryony Gillard’s reading list.
- written responses to the exhibition by Jerwood Writer in Residence Marek Sullivan, coming soon.
- online recordings of events in the programme as they become available; find out more about the upcoming events, here.
About Jerwood Solo Presentations 2021
Freya Dooley’s Temporary Commons is an immersive multi-channel sound installation that weaves dodgy plumbing, turbulent neighbours, bad weather, canned laughter, pets and etymology to describe experiences of connection, untethering, and futile attempts at control.
Bryony Gillard’s I dreamed I called you on the telephone is a moving-image work which considers loss, illness and time under late capitalism.
Emii Alrai’s Passing of the Lilies is a layered installation which positions monumental sculptural forms alongside smaller clay pieces to interrogate the idea of value and the origins of artefacts.
Learn more about the commissions in the exhibition notes:
Exhibition notes: Jerwood Solo Presentations 2021
Exhibition notes: Jerwood Solo Presentations 2021 (Large Print)
Now in its fifth year, Jerwood Solo Presentations creates a much needed platform for early-career artists to make and show new work. It provides a fully resourced opportunity for three artists to develop a significant new commission at a pivotal moment in their career. The resulting exhibition creates a unique space for conversation and experimentation, across and between disciplines.
Jerwood Solo Presentations 2021 are selected and curated by Harriet Cooper, Head of Visual Arts.
Plan your visit until 17 July 2021, here.
About the artists
Emii Alrai uses sculpture and installation to interrogate ideas of inherited nostalgia, geographical identity and post-colonial museum practices of collecting and display. Rooted in her Iraqi heritage, her work draws on museum collections, ancient writing from the Middle East and oral histories to navigate an understanding of displacement and cultural collision.
Emii was born in Blackpool and is based in Leeds. She graduated from the University of Leeds with an MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies in 2018. Alrai recently completed the Triangle Astérides Residency in Marseille. In 2020 she received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Artist Award and was part of the Yorkshire Sculpture International Sculpture Network. She was selected for the Arab British Centre Making Marks Project in Kuwait in 2019 and the Tetley Artist Associate Programme in 2018. Recent solo exhibitions include: The High Dam, The Tetley, Leeds (2020); Tutelaries, VITRINE, London (2019); House of Teeming Cattle, Two Queens, Leicester (2019); and An Ancient Quiver, GLOAM, Sheffield (2018). Notable group and duo exhibitions include: Fallow, Rectory Projects, London (2019); The Hum, Caustic Coastal, Salford (2017); and Limbo Lambada, Hutt Collective, Nottingham (2017). In 2022 she will be exhibiting new work at Eastside Projects, Birmingham, and in a two-person exhibition with Eve Tagny at Visual Arts Centre of Clarington in Canada. emiialrai.com
Freya Dooley works across media encompassing writing, moving-image, performance and sound in her practice. Her work builds layered and unstable narratives: collaborative fictions which navigate their way through divergent subjects, expanding outwards from close-range environments and observations.
Freya lives and works in Cardiff. She graduated with a BA (Hons) Fine Art from Cardiff School of Art and Design in 2011 and was a member of Syllabus III, a UK-based peer-led alternative learning programme, in 2017-18. Dooley currently holds a two-year Fellowship at g39, Cardiff, which is supported by the Freelands Artist Programme. In 2020 she undertook a residency with Beppu Project in Japan supported by Wales Arts International. Recent solo exhibitions and projects include: Scenes from Between the Mountains and the Sea, Beppu Project, Oita, Japan (2020); Ventriloquy for Radio, part of Interruptions at Holden Gallery, Manchester (2020); New Writing with New Contemporaries including performances at Leeds Art Gallery and South London Gallery (2019-20); Somewhere in the Crowd There’s You, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2019); and The song settles inside of the body it borrows, Chapter Gallery, Cardiff (2019). She was shortlisted for the Kleinwort-Hambros Emerging Artist Prize in 2019. freyadooley.com
Bryony Gillard works across writing, workshops, performance, video and exhibition-making to reflect upon events, creatures and ideas that refuse to be categorised. In her work she creates a space for genealogies of intersectional feminist practice that are elusive, messy and thoroughly entangled in contemporary concerns.
Bryony is an artist, curator and educator based in Bristol. She graduated with an MFA from the Dutch Art Institute, School for Art Praxis in 2015. Her work was included in the Tate touring exhibition Virginia Woolf: an exhibition inspired by her writings (2018) and she was awarded the 2019 Royal Albert Memorial Museum artist commission to create Unctuous Between Fingers which has also been shown at The Holden Gallery, Manchester; Cinema Maison, BB15, Linz; TBA21 Academy, Venice; and Arnolfini, Bristol (2019-20). Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include: A new commission with University of Bristol’s Postgraduate Research Department and Brigstow Institute (forthcoming, 2021); Slippery Bodies, FLATLAND projects, Hastings (2019); Bau-bo-bad performance, De Pimlico Projects, London (2019); and A cap, like water, transparent, fluid yet with definite body, Peninsula Arts, Plymouth and Turf Projects, Croydon (2017-18). She is an associate lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire and facilitates creative workshops for adults and young people. bryonygillard.co.uk
