False Wife – Film London Derek Jarman Award Touring Programme 2022

Tuesday 18 October, 7pm

Join us for the live screening of False Wife (2022) by shortlisted Film London Derek Jarman award nominee Jamie Crewe, and a subsequent Q&A between the artist and Void Director Mary Cremin.

Book for the Q&A in Void via the link here.

Alongside this in-person screening and Q&A, an online screening of works by all six of the 2022 Film London Derek Jarman award shortlist will be freely available to view via a link sent to your email, from 12 midday to 12 midnight on 18 October 2022.

Book for the online screening via the link here.

Jamie Crewe, False Wife (2022)

False Wife (2022) is a work that leads its visitors through an ordeal of transformation. A poppers training video is typically a user-made compilation of pornographic clips, uploaded to adult video hosting sites. These clips are paired with text, hypnotic music, voiceovers, and instructions for action. Viewers are told to masturbate and sniff poppers, to let imagery and sensation meld, and reach a gooning ecstatic fervour.

False Wife is a poppers training video, but its material is obscure. Its narrative is drawn from a variety of folk tales in which transformation occurs, and relationships happen. Its footage is scavenged from sources that reflect these themes, reduced to slivers of significant imagery, rubbed together. These originating sources are warped or inflamed to say ambiguous things: to discuss desire, shame, transgression, and the longing for change, and the various ways we want — and don’t want — to face them.

The Film London Jarman Award 2022

Discover the incredible diversity within the world of artists’ filmmaking in the UK, with a presentation of the work of the shortlist of this year’s Film London Jarman Award. Films in the programme use animation, archive, poetry, dance and hypnotic music to explore narratives around abolition and colonial history, adolescent London in the 90s and Fairy folklore, pop culture and climate change.

The artists shortlisted this year are: Grace Ndiritu, Onyeka Igwe, Alberta Whittle, Rosa-Johan Uddoh, Morgan Quaintance, Jamie Crewe. The programme will also feature a Q&A with Jamie Crewe at the gallery (book via link above).

Inspired by visionary British filmmaker Derek Jarman, the Award recognises and supports artists working with the moving image. The shortlisted artists illustrate the spirit of inventiveness within moving image, highlighting the breadth of creativity and craftsmanship the medium has to offer, as well as its powerful ability to engage and provoke audiences. The Award comes with a £10,000 prize.

The winner of the Film London Jarman Award will be announced on the 22 November at the Barbican Centre. The award is presented in partnership with the Whitechapel Gallery.

The tour runs from 23 September to 12 November, in partnership with seven arts venues across the UK.

Jamie Crewe Biography

Jamie is a graduate of Sheffield Hallam University and Glasgow School of Art. They have had a number of solo exhibitions, including at Gasworks (London), Tramway (Glasgow), and Grand Union (Birmingham). Their work has also been presented in group exhibitions such as Glasgow International Festival Director’s Programme and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Kathy Acker at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London). Jamie was the recipient of the tenth Margaret Tait Award, Scotland’s most prestigious moving image prize for artists, and the resultant work, Ashley, was premiered at Glasgow Film Festival in March 2020.

Films in the Jarman Award Touring Programme 2022:

Grace Ndiritu, Black Beauty (2021), 29 mins
Onyeka Igwe, a so-called archive (2020), 20 mins
Alberta Whittle, Lagareh – The Last Born (2022), 32 mins
Rosa-Johan Uddoh, Black Poirot (2018-2021), 21 mins
Morgan Quaintance, Surviving You, Always (2020), 18 mins
Jamie Crewe, False Wife (2022), 15 mins

Acknowledgements

Image credit: Jamie Crewe – False Wife (2022) [still 01]

This event is presented as part of Void’s Public Programme of events for current exhibition Being in a Place: A Portrait of Margaret Tait by Luke Fowler. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Margaret Tait Estate, The Modern Institute, Orkney Library & Archive, LUX, LUX Scotland, Pier Arts Centre, and Sarah Neely.

Void Gallery is supported using public funding from Arts Council Northern Ireland, Austin and Hope Pilkington Foundation, Arnold Clarke Foundation, Derry City and Strabane District Council, The Ireland Funds, Ragdoll Foundation, Art Fund, Halifax Foundation, The Arts Society.