MAEVE BRENNAN AND IMRAN PERRETTA WIN 2018 JERWOOD/FVU AWARDS

The Jerwood/FVU Awards announced today that Maeve Brennan and Imran Perretta have been named the winners of the 2018 edition of the prize. The artists will receive $25,000 each in support of the creation of new moving-image works. Once completed, the projects will be exhibited from April 6 to June 3, 2018, at Jerwood Space in London before touring the UK.

The curatorial theme of the awards’ fifth iteration, “Unintended Consequences,” addresses how the best-laid plans can unravel and well-intentioned actions can provoke unexpected side effects. The winning proposals were selected from a pool of 170 applications by Noor Afshan Mirza, artist and cofounder of no.w.here; George Vasey, a curator for the 2017 Turner Prize and curatorial fellow at Newcastle University; Steven Bode, director of FVU; and Sarah Williams, head of program at Jerwood Visual Arts.

“I was amazed at the quality and breadth of great applicants for this year’s Jerwood/FVU Awards and it was a very difficult decision to short-list from the many applications,” Vasey said. “Maeve Brennan’s and Imran Perretta’s proposals felt rigorous, considered and prescient. Both these artists make serious art for serious times, and I’m hugely excited to see what they can do with the money and support from FVU and Jerwood Charitable Foundation at a formative moment in their careers.”

Brennan’s proposed work considers the ripple effects of wind turbines as alternative producers of clean energy from a renewable resource in the larger ecosystem. Perretta’s project examines how the face of the refugee has been dehumanized, often anonymized, and frequently demonized, by contrasting the personal testimony of asylum seekers with public perception and popular iconography.