LONDON.- Freelands Foundation today announces the five visual arts organisations and women artists under consideration for the seventh annual Freelands Award, which enables a UK arts organisation to present an exhibition, including significant new work, by a mid-career woman artist who may not yet have received the acclaim or public recognition that her work deserves.
The organisations and artists shortlisted for the Freelands Award 2022 are:
• Fruitmarket and Zarina Bhimji
• Turner Contemporary and Anya Gallaccio
• John Hansard Gallery and Permindar Kaur
• National Galleries of Scotland and Everlyn Nicodemus
• Warwick Arts Centre and Katrina Palmer
Five organisations and artists from across the UK are in contention for the recently increased prize of £110,000, awarded to an exhibition which will take place in the next three years. The award includes an allocated £30,000 fee for the winning artist. For the first time in the history of the Award, in 2022 the four runner-up organisations will also each receive £10,000 towards their programmes.
The announcement follows the nomination of two previous beneficiaries of the Freelands Award for the 2022 Turner Prize: Veronica Ryan (2018) is nominated for her solo exhibition at Spike Island, Bristol, and Ingrid Pollard (2020) for her exhibition at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes.
The winner of the Freelands Award 2022 will be announced on 30 November 2022 following selection by a jury including Elisabeth Murdoch (Founder and Chair, Freelands Foundation), Melanie Keen (Director, Wellcome Collection), writer Olivia Laing, artist Veronica Ryan (winner of the Freelands Award 2018) and Anthony Spira (Director, MK Gallery).
The announcement of the Freelands Award 2022 shortlist coincides with the first two recipients of the Freelands Art Fund Acquisition Scheme. Leeds Museums & Galleries will acquire 2018 winner Veronica Ryan’s sculpture Exclusion Zones I, 2021, and The Hunterian in Glasgow acquires three films made over the last forty years by 2017 winner Lis Rhodes. This follows the news that 2016 winner Jacqueline Donachie’s Advice Bar (Expanded for the Times), 1995/2017 enters the Tate collection, enabled by Freelands Foundation.
Fruitmarket, Edinburgh is shortlisted for the first solo exhibition in Scotland by artist Zarina Bhimji (b. 1963, Mbarara, Uganda), to be held from 29 October 2023 – 4 February 2024. Working since the 1980s in photography, installation and film, Bhimji is developing a new film for the show at Fruitmarket. Made in India, it will feature, “beauty, warmth, tenderness, smells, intense colour, texture and oils”.
Fiona Bradley, Director of Fruitmarket, said: “I am pleased that with this nomination Freelands Foundation have recognised the Fruitmarket’s track record in making career-enhancing and defining exhibitions with women artists – over the last ten years 57% of our solo exhibitions and publications have been dedicated to art made by women, with the figure rising to 87% over the last five years. Art is a force for social justice, which can resist and repair. It clears space for us, inspiring us to imagine a better world. This is the art that Fruitmarket champions: urgent, engaging, life-changing art, made by world-class artists and accessible to all in a free-to-enter, welcoming, vibrant public space right in the centre of Edinburgh. In a climate of rising costs, dwindling public funds and competition for financial survival, the enlightened, generous support offered by the Freelands Award to independent organisations such as the Fruitmarket is more vital than ever. I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of it”.
Turner Contemporary, Margate has been shortlisted for an exhibition with artist Anya Gallaccio (b. 1963, Paisley, Scotland), to be held in the winter of 2024. It will include critical sculptures and installations from her 35-year career, many remade for the first time, alongside a significant new commission responding to the geology of Kent and environmental issues.
Clarrie Wallis, Director of Turner Contemporary, said: “We are delighted to be one of five organisations from across the UK to have been shortlisted for the prestigious 2022 Freelands Award, which celebrates the achievements of often-overlooked women artists. Turner Contemporary is working with artist Anya Gallaccio on her most ambitious solo exhibition to date. All her projects are specific to place and time. Kent is traditionally known as ‘The Garden of England’ because of the abundance of orchards and hop gardens. Anya’s exhibition and accompanying engagement programme will directly explore Kent’s countryside, heritage, and history. Anya's interest in working with organic materials - such as ice, chalk, salt, flowers, or fruit - which change, disintegrate, grow or decay addresses our complex relationship with the natural world. Due to the temporal nature of her work, much of it is unknown. With this timely exhibition, we are eager to introduce her practice to a new generation concerned about complex eco-systems and the need for climate justice."
John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, will present a landmark exhibition by Permindar Kaur (b. 1965, Nottingham, UK) in summer 2024, including a range of her distinctive playful handmade sculptures, that resemble domestic objects and huggable toys. Small steel figures and welded furniture explore the heightened anxiety and power dynamics of public and private space following the Covid-19 pandemic.
Woodrow Kernohan, Director of John Hansard Gallery, said; “We are thrilled to be shortlisted for the Freelands Award 2022 for our forthcoming solo exhibition with Permindar Kaur. John Hansard Gallery is proudly committed to advancing the position of women artists at all stages of their careers. If successful, this prestigious award would support us to create a career defining exhibition by Permindar Kaur. Permindar’s exhibition, which will coincide with Southampton’s Mela festival in 2024, will actively connect with Southampton’s local context, history and diaspora communities. Permindar will explore ideas of internal and external, public and private. Her exhibition will extend beyond the gallery building into the exterior public space beyond.
Best of luck to all organisations nominated for the Freelands Award 2022. We are delighted to be shortlisted for this prestigious award and will continue striving to give women artists the opportunities and recognition they rightly deserve”.
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, will present the first UK museum show by Everlyn Nicodemus (b. 1954, Marangu, Tanzania) from September 2024 to May 2025. Since the 1980s, her cycles of paintings, collages and works on paper have explored violence against women, personal trauma and the isolation and dehumanisation of living within structural racism. Over the next two years, she will create a new series of large-scale oil paintings at her Edinburgh studio to be exhibited alongside historic works. The artist said: “To be recognised amongst my fellow women artists, when my work has for such a long time championed the under-recognised voices of marginalised women globally, is very meaningful.”
Sir John Leighton, Director-General of National Galleries of Scotland, said “The National Galleries of Scotland is delighted to be shortlisted for the Freelands Award 2022 in support of a major retrospective of Tanzanian-born, Edinburgh-based artist Everlyn Nicodemus. Nicodemus’ extraordinary body of work has rarely been seen in the UK, and with growing interest in her practice globally, this will mark her first exhibition in Scotland. This extensive exhibition will span forty years of practice and include new works specially produced for the show.
The Freelands Foundation’s support for women artists aligns with our priority to amplify artists whose work has been historically overlooked. In this major show we aim to tell stories beyond the established art historical canon. Everlyn is a remarkable artist with an inspiring biography, and a conviction in the power of art as ‘universal communication between people.’ We look forward to sharing her artworks and ideas with our visitors.
Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, is shortlisted for a solo exhibition by Katrina Palmer (b.1967, London) from 12 January to 23 April 2023. A new site-specific installation will explore structural constraints and internalised resistances through a series of unfired clay sculptures, drawings and moving image works. In a shift from her better-known textual works, the artist says that this commission is: “de-centring my writing practice, voiding it of words… promoted by a new sense of freedom afforded by this Freelands Award nomination.”
Doreen Foster, Director of Warwick Arts Centre, said “We are thrilled to be shortlisted for the Freelands Award 2022 for our forthcoming solo exhibition What’s Already Going On, by Katrina Palmer. Over the last two decades Katrina Palmer has investigated the relationship between sculpture and writing to expand our understanding of sculptural practice. We are excited to offer this opportunity for Palmer to extend her research with her largest commission to date. Warwick Arts Centre and the Mead Gallery have a long history of championing women artists, and we are delighted that Freelands Foundation have recognised the significance of this project.”
The Award will be accompanied by the publication of the Freelands Foundation’s seventh report into ‘The Representation of Women Artists in the UK’. The report is written by Charlotte Bonham Carter and will include new data and essays exploring the intersection impact of disability on women artists and disparities in studio provision.
