Jerwood Arts and Photoworks present new commissions by Joanne Coates and Heather Agyepong, awardees of the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 4.

Now in its fourth edition, the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards are a major commissioning opportunity supporting early-career artists working with photography to make new work and significantly develop their practice. The awardees were selected from over 370 applications to a national call for entries and will realise ambitious new works over a 12 months period for a national touring exhibition launching in London at Jerwood Space in autumn 2022.

Joanne Coates’ The Lie of the Land is a body of work that explores the social history of the land and narrates a story of gender and class that has long been forgotten – or simply never told – in relation to the countryside of the North East of England. For this commission, she is collaborating with twelve women who identify as working class, living and working in rural or agricultural settings, to develop a series of portraits that represent their individual lived experiences.

Selectors: Christine Eyene (Lecturer in Contemporary Art at Liverpool John Moores University and Research Curator at Tate Liverpool), Joy Gregory (artist), Sunil Gupta (photographer), Julia Bunnemann (Curator, Photoworks) and Harriet Cooper (Head of Visual Arts, Jerwood Arts).  Applicants were longlisted prior to the final panel meeting by staff from Photoworks and Jerwood Arts, along with members of ReFramed, a Midlands-based network for Black, Asian and people of colour interested in producing photographic visual art.

The Jerwood/Photoworks Awards are a collaboration between Jerwood Arts and Photoworks, supported by print partner Spectrum Photographic.

Joanne is a Millennium Images contributor check her work here. And you can follow her on Instagram here.