About the Awards

The Jerwood/FVU Awards are a major opportunity for moving-image artists in the first five years of their practice, a collaboration between Jerwood Arts and Film and Video Umbrella in partnership with Leeds Art Gallery. The call for entries invites artists to make proposals for ambitious new works, two of which are selected each year by a panel of experts. The selected artists receive an award of £25,000 each. This will be used to provide an artist fee and a budget to create their proposed artworks. Each recipient also receives full production support from FVU. In 2022 the finished works will exhibit at Jerwood Arts, London and Leeds Art Gallery before touring. 

 

Marianna Simnett, recipient of the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2014-15, and shortlisted artist for the Jarman Award 2017:

"I’m writing to thank you very much for your support. Yesterday the Jarman Award shortlist was revealed and I am one of six shortlisted. It is almost certain that without you I would not have had the opportunity to find myself on the path I am on now. Thank you so very much for your trust in my work at a time when it wasn’t obvious what would come of it, and when I didn’t have the production support that you enabled for the first time. It’s really important for me to acknowledge what had happened and what has led to what, so a huge THANK YOU! I would like to tell the world loud and clear how amazing you are."

 

Lawrence Lek, recipient of the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2017:

"The Jerwood/FVU Awards let me make my most personal and most complex work yet. Last year, I had reached the limits of my way of working, so the Awards enabled me to work with a team of friends, pushing every aspect of sound and vision further. Working with video, it takes a long time to finish things, and sometimes your most important ideas are the hardest to maintain. Geomancer started as a short text about an Daoist AI I wrote in 2013, and without the Awards there's no way I could have seen it through. Even though it's all computer-generated, I feel like I've made something that I can call a film."

 

Patrick Hough, recipient of the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2017:

"The Jerwood/FVU awards were a thrilling opportunity to make my wildest ideas a palpable reality. While many funding organisations would run to the hills when faced with a proposal of such epic proportions, the Awards were willing to give me a platform for risk and innovation, declaring that nothing was impossible. Like no other in the UK, they actively encourage emerging artists to be bold, ambitious and push the form of moving image to its very limit - a considerable thing, especially at a time when funding for the arts continues to constrict.

The Awards' high-profile reputation gave me the possibility to approach a team of dazzlingly skilled collaborators from writing, composing, voice acting and cinematography to laser scanning and cutting-edge visual effects as good as any Hollywood blockbuster. In parallel to this, the regular critical feedback and mentoring from Film and Video Umbrella proved absolutely invaluable at keeping my expansive conceptual framework sharply focused.

It was an unforgettable eight months that has indelibly transformed my practice. I now find myself surrounded by a trusted team of collaborators all eager for our next adventure, and a sense possibility for what might be to come."

 

Ed Atkins, recipient of the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2012-13:

"This glimpse of being taken seriously - the professional collaborative possibilities, the budget, the discursive weight, the deadlines -  all of this conjured a sense that my work could matter."