For nearly two decades, the Jarman Award has marked a key moment in the UK’s creative landscape. Each year, the prize spotlights emerging artists who are reinventing what moving-image work can be. Taking its name from the radical filmmaker and artist Derek Jarman (1942–1994), the award seeks out practices that echo his bold, boundary-breaking approach. Previous winners feature some of today’s most influential contemporary practitioners, including Heather Phillipson, Imran Perretta, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Luke Fowler and Sin Wai Kin. Now, Morgan Quaintance and Onyeka Igwe join that illustrious list. The two artists were announced as joint winners of the 2025 Film London Jarman Award at a special ceremony at Soho Hotel last night. It’s a historic moment: the first time the award has been shared between two people who were considered equally deserving of the accolade.
Artist, writer and musician Morgan Quaintance works across multiple media in an expanded art practice, producing richly layered films with an intense sensory impact. His practice brings together the visual language of experimental film with a deft handling of sound and music, working with disparate material to guide the viewer into unexpected places. Quaintance’s subject matter is constantly changing, but his films are unified by an abstract style, which loops, breaks, jolts and refuses a linear narrative, drawing the viewer into a flow of restless images that tap into the subliminal. Repetitions (2022) uses telephone messages and speech to discuss physical labour and industrial work. The Jarman Award Jury, made up of representatives from Barbican, Channel 4, Whitechapel Gallery and Film London, as well as Maryam Tafakory, the 2024 Jarman Awardee, “acknowledged the fluency and restlessless of Quaintance’s work as distinctive and singular,” praising his use of the moving image “as a container to hold multiple different disciplines.”
The London-based artist was shortlisted for the 2025 Aesthetica Art Prize for Surviving You, Always (2021), a film which delves into the complexities of urban life and fragmented narratives through still images and written narration. The film invites viewers to engage with dual perspectives, creating a layered emotional experience that reflects on adolescence, class and the human condition within London’s cityscape. He joins a raft of remarkable Aesthetica alumni who have since gone on to be recognised by the Jarman Award jury, including Jasmina Cibic, Jenn Nkiru, Larry Achiampong and last year’s Jarman winner, Maryam Tafakory. It is an impressive list, each of whom are driving the narrative around artists’ film in contemporary culture.
Onyeka Igwe joins Quaintance as the 2025 Jarman winner. The artist uses film, sound, text and performance to explore complex historical and political questions about how we live together. Igwe draws on in-depth research to investigate overlooked moments in history, telling stories of protest and community through a combination of archival material, performance and a cinematic engagement with space. Her practice often explores the connections between Britain and Nigeria, engaging with the politics of anti-colonial resistance and her own family history, with a particular focus on the propaganda work of the Colonial Film Unit. Igwe’s exhibition our generous mother, currently on show at Tate Britain, continues her interest in post-colonial thought, focusing on the history of the University of Ibadan. Established by the British in 1948, it later became a centre for radical thinkers in post-independence Nigeria, and was attended by the artist’s mother in the 1970s.
Quaintance and Igwe were selected from a truly impressive shortlist, featuring fellow Aesthetica Art Prize alumnus Hope Strickland; creative duo Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah; Karimah Ashadu; and George Finlay Ramsay. Ashadu’s Machine Boys (2024) captures the bravado and fragility of Lagos motorcycle taxi drivers, whilst Ramsay’s 16mm trilogy Flex, Wax & Glass (2023–25) meditates on grief and inherited tradition within a rare Southern Italian bloodletting rite. Strickland’s a river holds a perfect memory (2024) weaves Jamaican waterways with the industrialised rivers of northern England to examine interconnected histories of care and extraction, building on her growing recognition as a rising voice in moving image. Meanwhile, Aburawa and Shah’s And still, it remains (2023) offers a quiet, cinematic study of daily life in a remote Algerian village marked by the enduring effects of French nuclear testing. It’s a shortlist that pushes beyond the conventional, opening the doors to new perspectives on culture, society and creation.
Members of the Jury spoke of the landmark decision to award two recipients, saying: “Both artists have produced significant bodies of work and consistently push the boundaries of what filmmaking can do. We are delighted that the Jarman Award can recognise both artists at a landmark moment in their respective careers, to celebrate the breadth and vitality of two distinct approaches to the moving image.” In breaking this new ground, the jury do more than simply recognise two artists, reminding audiences of the vast and innovative landscape of moving-image work. It is a testament to Derek Jarman’s legacy, reaffirming that in 2025, the spirit of innovation, risk-taking and boundary-breaking is alive and well.
The Jarman Award 2025 shortlisted artists will be featured in an exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery 18 November – 14 December 2025: whitechapelgallery.org
For more information about the prize, visit: filmlondon.org.uk
Words: Emma Jacob
Image Credits:
1&5. Onyeka Igwe, The Miracle on George Green (2022), video still. Courtesy of the artist.
2. Morgan Quaintance, Repetitions (2022), film still.
3. Onyeka Igwe, The Miracle on George Green (2022), video still. Courtesy of the artist.
4. Morgan Quaintance, Available Light (2025), film still. Courtesy of the artist.
