Maeve Brennan
Visual Arts recipient 2025
Maeve Brennan (born 1990) is an artist and filmmaker based in London. Her practice explores the social, historical and political resonance of material and place. Working across moving image, installation, sculpture and printed matter, her works are excavations – revealing layered histories and unseen structures. They take you to the backstage of history, to the sites, voices and processes that precede the official version of events.
At the heart of her practice is curiosity – investigating how materials and objects carry histories, how hidden systems operate, and how networks shape the way we live. Her work often weaves in themes of repair and reparation, sharing stories from people committed to revealing truths that are too often overlooked. Alongside research, Brennan engages in long-term investigations working with a documentary fieldwork approach, establishing meaningful relationships with her subjects and her collaborators, telling their stories with care and sensitivity.
Brennan studied at Goldsmiths and then lived in Beirut, where she made a suite of works that explored material histories shaped by the colonial legacy in Palestine and Lebanon, as well as her family’s history there. This led to her ongoing multidisciplinary body of work ‘The Goods’ (2018 – present) which examines the illicit traffic of cultural artefacts. Recent and forthcoming presentations of her work include: Tai Kwun Contemporary (HK), Barbican Centre (UK), The High Line (NYC), Somerset House (UK), Tate Britain (UK), MAXXI Museum (IT), Kettle’s Yard (UK), VISUAL Carlow (IE), The Whitworth (UK), Lentos Kunstmuseum (AUT), Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (DE), E‑WERK Freiburg (DE), British Art Show 9 (UK), Stanley Picker Gallery (UK), Mother’s Tankstation (IE), Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art (FI), Chisenhale Gallery (UK) and Spike Island (UK).
She was shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2024. Other awards include the Sainsbury Scholarship, British School of Rome (2023), the Stanley Picker Fine Art Fellowship (2019–22), and the Jerwood/FVU Award (2018).
Maeve is in residence at Somerset House Studios, and her films are distributed by LUX.
“Receiving the award at this moment in time is nothing short of life changing. To be able to pursue new research, to have the time and freedom to think and work without constant financial pressure and precarity is a unique gift. My work is deliberately slow, it involves building meaningful relationships with people and places, to attend to the complex worlds and networks I encounter. This award is recognition of all of those who have contributed in some way. I am so grateful to the foundation, the nominators and the judges for this tremendous opportunity.”
Examples of work
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SITICULOSA, 2025 -
AN EXCAVATION, 2022 -
WITH HORSES, 2023. Photo credit: Maeve Brennan. -
THE GOODS, 2018. Photo credit: Markus Tretter.
Awards for Artists
Find out more about the Awards and the rest of this year’s recipients.
