The artists selected for Jerwood Survey III are: Che Applewhaite, Aqsa Arif, MV Brown, Philippa Brown, Alliyah Enyo, Sam Keelan, Paul Nataraj, Ciarán Ó’Dochartaigh, Ebun Sodipo and Kandace Siobhan Walker.
This edition is led by Southwark Park Galleries in London and launches there from 6 April – 23 June 2024, before touring to g39 in Cardiff 13 July – 7 September 2024 and Site Gallery in Sheffield 27 September 2024 – 26 January 2025. It will culminate at Collective in Edinburgh 28 February – 4 May 2025, marking the first time that the project has been presented in Scotland.
More about the artists:
London based Che Applewhaite is an artist, filmmaker, and writer who facilitates critical engagement with ongoing histories borne of territory, ideology, and documentary. His debut short film, A New England Document is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. His latest short film, I AM THE WORLD, is an official selection of Aesthetica Film Festival 2023. His work has been exhibited internationally at film festivals, museums, galleries, and sites of study. Applewhaite was nominated by Sin Wai Kin.
Aqsa Arif is an interdisciplinary artist working across film, installation and poetry in which she explores identity disruption, migration and the process of healing through archetypal narratives. As a Pakistani refugee to Scotland, now based in Glasgow, she experienced life with the split of two cultural identities, a polarity underpinning her work. Recently, she was awarded a 15-month residency at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum with UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute, the RSA Morton Award and Platform: 2023 Early Career Artist Award. Arif was nominated by Alberta Whittle.
Rooted in performance, Glasgow based MV Brown’s practice uses the human body and new technologies to explore tensions across embodied subjectivity, the body as spectacle and socio-techno constructs of gender and sexuality. Their practice builds upon questions around the (non)performance of daily life & identity in a post-internet context. Drawing on cyberfeminist, glitch-feminist and transhumanist approaches; they investigate avatars, prototypes, ‘false-self’hoods and the fallacy of the ‘IRL’. Brown was nominated by Hanna Tuulikki.
Philippa Brown lives in Cardiff and is a multidisciplinary artist looking through portals and hovering between enlightenment, fantasy and bogus wisdom. She makes sculptural forms, installations and paintings as a means to explore the ambiguous, magical and sometimes fragile interconnectedness between histories, materials, beliefs and bodies of all kinds. Nostalgia, subcultures and the occult, an undercurrent of playfulness, are the portals through which Brown explores conformity and alternative ways of living. Brown was nominated by Davida Hewlett.
Glasgow artist Alliyah Enyo’s interdisciplinary practice gravitates towards embodied and meditative processes. She harnesses song, somatics and sculpture to create ‘sonorous myth’ installations and performances. Woven soundscapes materialise taking the form of multi-layered tape loops, collaging her voice, foraged field recordings and memories The work shrouds the audience in a slowed, surreal state revealing the bedrock of her research which investigates myths, folkloric tales or science fiction stories concerning queer ecological perspectives and histories. Enyo was nominated by Hanna Tuulikki.
Sam Keelan, based in London, uses his work to tell gay surreal narratives, primarily executed through photography, moving image and writing. These narratives dissect the day-to-day connections to one another — taking ideas around individualism, care and community from the collective consciousness — then transforming benign aspects from these ideas to create queer doppelgängers of dominant middle class ideologies, often reinserted back into domestic spaces. Keelan was nominated by Lindsey Mendick.
Paul Nataraj is a sound artist and researcher and educator, from Blackburn, Lancashire. He is currently working as a Research Associate on ‘Migrant Memory and the Postcolonial Imagination (MMPI) project at Loughborough University. His research and sound art practice explores the South Asian diaspora, sound, memory and sonic materiality. His work has been exhibited and played internationally including the British Textile Biennale 2021 and the Kochi Biennale 2022. Nataraj was nominated by Nicola Singh.
Ciáran Ó Dochartaigh is an artist, researcher and Gaeilgeoir from Derry, living and working sporadically with chronic illness as a legacy of post colonialism. His mixed media practice explores complexities inherent within post-conflict experience and the embodiment of personal loss with the legacy of political violence and lived experience. He has an ongoing research relationship with a family of donkeys, and formerly a group of snails, to explore interspecies relationships, labour and kinship. Ó Dochartaigh was nominated by Locky Morris.
Ebun Sodipo, based in London, makes work for black trans people of the future. Guided by black feminist study, with a methodology of collage and fabulation, her work locates and produces real and imaginable narratives of black trans women’s presence, embodiment, and interiority across the past, present, and future. In doing this, Sodipo fills in historical gaps to create moments of archival pleasure for black trans people. This work takes place across multiple spaces: galleries, festivals, theatres, digital, and print; in varied forms such as sound, performance, text, installation, video, and sculpture. Sodipo was nominated by Sin Wai Kin and Evan Ifekoya.
Kandace Siobhan Walker is a writer and artist of Jamaican-Canadian, Saltwater Geechee and Welsh heritage, living in London. Her practice explores the intersections of personal history with wider social movements and systems. Dreams, displacement, belonging, care, community, spirituality and justice are recurring themes in her work. Her writing has appeared in The Poetry Review, Poetry Wales and The Guardian and aired on Channel 4 and BBC Radio 4. She is the author of Kaleido (Bad Betty Press, 2022) and Cowboy (CHEERIO, 2023). Walker was nominated by gentle/radical.
Established in 2018, this third edition of Jerwood Survey introduces new partnerships and continues to build on Jerwood Arts’ and the partners’ specialist knowledge and experience of working with early-career artists across artforms. The selection of artists was made by a panel chaired by Lilli Geissendorfer, former Director, Jerwood Arts, including Charlotte Baker, Deputy Director, Southwark Park Galleries; Anthony Shapland, Creative Director, g39; Angelica Sule, former Programme Director, Site Gallery; Siobhan Carroll, former Head of Programme, Collective; and Jerwood Survey II artist Tako Taal. The project is being supported by Harriet Cooper, Project Director, Jerwood Survey III, who led previous editions in her former role at Jerwood Arts.
Jerwood Survey responds to a vital need for artists who are still early in their careers to benefit from a supported opportunity to make and show new work in a group exhibition format. As lead partner for Jerwood Survey III, Southwark Park Galleries will support the selected artists to develop their commissions over 9-months, curating the premiere presentation of the exhibition and producing a unique catalogue with new writing commissions.
All four gallery partners have specific strengths in supporting and sharing the work of early-career practices, and will connect the artists in Jerwood Survey III with wider local and national audiences through the exhibition and public programme at their venue. As in previous iterations of the project, all exhibiting artists will be funded to attend previews and events at each partner venue; expanding their networks across different parts of the UK and developing new dialogues as a peer group.
Aqsa Arif, selected artist:
“I am absolutely delighted to be part of the remarkable selection of artists in Jerwood Survey III. Having my work showcased on a national scale at this calibre represents a significant step in my artistic journey and I’m looking forward to refining my work to inhabit these four distinct gallery spaces.”
I feel incredibly honoured to be a part of this roster of artists and an organisation which has already displayed such integrity. This commission is giving me time to really focus on the development of my current research which explores my science fiction story ‘Aphotic Archaeology’. I am thrilled to be given the time to dive deeper into the details of this story and how this body of work can function as a vessel for discovering queer ecological perspectives and forgotten archaeological histories… It’s great to feel a sense of new connections that have begun to take shape already, and to feel a part of this community of creative artists and arts workers. – Alliyah Enyo, selected artist
I am blown away to be part of Jerwood Survey III. I feel extremely honoured to have the privilege to be part of this exhibition. The gallery spaces are stunning and other artists’ work is phenomenal, so it’s extremely exciting to be working with such amazing people, and I am hugely looking forward to seeing it all come together. – Paul Nataraj, selected artist.
A full exhibition announcement for Jerwood Survey III will be made in early 2024.
