Jamie Crewe
Visual Arts recipient 2023
Jamie Crewe is an artist working with video, text, installation, sculpture, drawing, painting and music. Their work is an ambitious and complex investigation of community, culture and self. Through poetic retellings of Ancient Greek myths, Victorian literature, Scottish folklore and more, they create dreamlike vignettes that express constriction and resistance. Crewe’s experiments with established narratives create new allegorical traditions that attempt to give voice to thoughts and feelings that have no language of their own.
“This award represents a huge change in my circumstances. The feelings are trembling, laughing, vague fear, and deep, deep relief. I listened to ‘And The Melody Still Lingers On’ by Chaka Khan after learning I would be receiving the award, and felt disproportionately scorched by it — tears at the bus stop. I thought in passing: ‘I can start living my life.’ This award enables me to continue my practice, and to do so with a level of financial security and support I have never experienced. I feel very grateful and very moved.”
In 2022 Crewe was awarded the EMAF Award for ground-breaking work in media art at the 35th European Media Arts Festival, Osnabrück, Germany for their film False Wife, which also screened at Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival and the 61st New York Film Festival in 2023. In 2020 they received a Turner Bursary and they were the Winner of the Margaret Tait Award 2019/20. In 2022 they were nominated for the Film London Jarman Award. Crewe has had solo exhibitions at LUX Moving Image, London (2020); Humber Street Gallery, Hull, UK (2020); Grand Union, Birmingham (2020); Tramway, Glasgow (2018); Gasworks, London (2017); and Transmission, Glasgow (2016). Crewe’s work was included in British Art Show 9, Aberdeen, Wolverhampton, Manchester, and Plymouth, UK (2021–22); I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Kathy Acker at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2019); and the KW Production Series at Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin (2018).
Examples of work
FALSE WIFE, 2022
Local website, poppers training video. 15 minutes 32 seconds duration (extract 1 minute 57 seconds). Presented online, commissioned by Dr Chloë Kennedy, Senior Lecturer in Criminal Law at Edinburgh Law School, and the University of Edinburgh Art Collection. Video element screened at EMAF (Osnabrück, 2022), Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival (2023) and the 61st New York Film Festival (2023).
FALSE WIFE COMMENTS, 2023
Printed book, 140mm x 110mm x 80mm, 708 pages (edition of 40). False Wife Comments presents text taken from False Wife (2022), alongside newly written commentary and a drawing of a bòcan. Commissioned by the University of Edinburgh’s Art Collection. Available to public and private collection.
SLABS BY RADCLYFFE HALL, 2020
Botanicals, fibres, fired clay, 3000mm x 2000m x 75mm total (17 individual works in 25 pieces). Presented at Solidarity & Love, Humber Street Gallery, Hull, 2020), Love & Solidarity, Grand Union (Birmingham, 2020) and British Art Show 9, Wolverhampton School of Art (Wolverhampton, 2022).
“MORTON” – “BEEDLES” – “AN ABYSS” / “THE IDEAL BAR” – “LE NARCISSE” – “ALEC’S”, 2020
Two videos intended to be viewed simultaneously. 30 minutes duration (extract 2 minutes 2 seconds). Presented at Solidarity & Love, Humber Street Gallery (Hull, 2020), Love & Solidarity, Grand Union (Birmingham, 2020) and British Art Show 9, Wolverhampton School of Art (Wolverhampton, 2022).