LUX Scotland is delighted to announce the shortlist for the 2022 Margaret Tait Award. Sekai Machache, Sulaïman Majali, Rae-Yen Song, and Natasha Thembiso Ruwona have been shortlisted from a pool of eligible artists who were nominated through an open call process.
The shortlisted artists have been invited to submit a proposal for the £15,000 commission, which will premiere at Glasgow Film Festival in 2023, and will subsequently tour with LUX Scotland alongside a solo exhibition at LUX’s space in London. The 2022 Award will be announced on Monday 7 March 2022 at Glasgow Film Theatre alongside the announcement of the new Margaret Tait Residency recipient and the premiere of Emilia Beatriz’s 2020 award commission.
The Margaret Tait Award is Scotland’s most prestigious annual moving image prize for artists. Inspired by the pioneering Orcadian filmmaker and poet Margaret Tait (1918–99), the award recognises experimental and innovative artists working with the moving image, offering a unique avenue of commissioning and production support and providing a high-profile platform to exhibit newly commissioned work.
Established in 2010, the Margaret Tait Award is a LUX Scotland commission delivered in partnership with Glasgow Film with support from The National Lottery and the Scottish Government through Screen Scotland. The only award of its kind in Scotland, it allows LUX Scotland, Glasgow Film and Screen Scotland to make a lasting and meaningful impact on the careers of promising filmmaking talent, support new commissions and forge new partnerships across the sector.
Kitty Anderson, Director, LUX Scotland, said, “The nominations we received for the 2022 Margaret Tait Award demonstrate the wide range of excellent moving image work being produced by artists across all parts of Scotland. It was a real privilege to view the works in this context and to discuss them at length with this year’s selection panel.”
Each year, the award is presented to an artist based in Scotland who has established a significant body of work over the past 5–10 years; is recognised by peers for their contribution to the artists’ moving image sector; and can demonstrate the significant impact that the award will have on the development of their practice.
Nominations are assessed by a panel of artists and professionals from across the fields of the visual arts and cinema. The selection panel for the 2022 Margaret Tait Award is comprised of Jamie Crewe, Glasgow based artist and Margaret Tait Award 2019 recipient; Kirsten Body, Inverness based curator and producer; Georgina Jackson, Director of The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Dublin; Rabz Lansiquot, London based artist and programmer, part of curatorial collaboration Languid Hands; Kitty Anderson, Director of LUX Scotland; and a representative from Creative Scotland.
Previous recipients of the Margaret Tait Award include Andrew Black, Emilia Beatriz, Jamie Crewe, Alberta Whittle, Sarah Forrest, Kate Davis, Duncan Marquiss, Charlotte Prodger, Rachel Maclean, Stephen Sutcliffe, Anne-Marie Copestake and Torsten Lauschmann.
Images of the artists’ work available upon request.
For media information contact Nicola Jeffs - [email protected] 07794 694 754
Full details about the Margaret Tait Award can be found at: https://luxscotland.org.uk/programme/margaret-tait-award-residency/
Image credits, from top left to bottom right:
Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, dwelling on a sanctuary, 2021. Courtesy of the artist
Rae-Yen Song, wūûūwūûū (video still), 2021. Courtesy of the artist
Sekai Machache, The Divine Sky. Courtesy of the artist
Sulaïman Majali, false dawn, 2021. Courtesy of the artist
More information
Sekai Machache is a Zimbabwean-Scottish visual artist and curator based in Glasgow, Scotland. Her work is a deep interrogation of the notion of self. She is interested in the relationship between spirituality, imagination, and the role of the artist in disseminating symbolic imagery to provide a space for healing.
Sekai works with a wide range of media, her practice embodies performance to camera, photography and moving image. Her photographic practice is formulated through digital studio-based compositions utilising body paint and muted lighting to create images that appear to emerge from darkness.
She seeks to represent the tension between stillness & movement which has naturally progressed into film. Sekai creates images that are theatrical in their chiaroscurist lighting, like paintings and film they tell layered stories, often accompanied by the artist’s poetry. Her work provides a dreamscape of spirituality & rituals, the perfect space for reflection.
Sulaïman Majali (b. 1991/2941/1492) is an artist poet who brings into play rupturing, grieving and dreaming as methodologies of collapse. Considering art as an already thinking and speaking thing, the artists agitate/incite/perform towards poetic and conceptual strategies. At issue in the play is the liberatory or otherwise.
Exhibitions and events include; false dawn, a solo exhibition at Studio Pavillion for Glasgow International Biennial 2021. IMG_5917, produced with Camara Taylor, commissioned by Artists’ Moving Image Festival, GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW: PART 6, LUX Scotland, online (2021). assembly of the dispersed, part of The Internet of Things, Darat al-Funun, Amman, Jordan/online (2020). strange winds, a sound commission for The Common Guild’s In The Open (2020). a dream for scheherazade, EVERYTHING HAPPENED SO MUCH, 66th International Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany (2020). WHAT’S AHEAD, WHAT’S KNOWN, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland (2020). saracen go home, a solo exhibition at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2019). something vague and irrational, Celine Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland (2019). assembly of the poets, a reading as part of EARTH HOLD, Qalandiya International Biennial, Serpentine Galleries, London, England (2018). Mene Mene Tekel Parsin, Wysing Arts Centre (2017). Towards an archive, 8th Cairo Video Festival (2017).
Rae-Yen Song (b. 1993, Edinburgh) is an artist based in Glasgow. Working expansively through drawing, sculpture, installation, costume, video, sound, performance, family collaboration and any other medium that becomes appropriate, Song’s practice is a long-term exercise in self-mythology as survival tactic. It explores the position of Other within our tangled reality, speaking broadly about foreignness, identity, and what it means to belong – or not.
Selected projects include: ▷▥◉▻, a solo exhibition currently showing at Dundee Contemporary Arts (December 2021 - March 2022); wūûūwūûū, a LUX Scotland moving image commission for BBC Scotland (2021); Fabric of Society, Glasgow International (2021); songdynasty.life, a nascent online archive, with videos commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival and Hunterian Art Gallery (2020 - ongoing); ✵may-may songuu✵, CFCCA, Manchester (2020); Survey, Jerwood Space, London (2018); Platform, Edinburgh Art Festival (2018); Human Rights Arts Festival, JDA Perera Gallery, Colombo (2017). Recent residencies include with Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh (2019-21); Hospitalfield, Arbroath (2019); Sura Madura, Sri Lanka (2017).
Song is also the co-founder of Jarsdell Solutions Ltd with artist and producer Michael Barr.
Natasha Thembiso Ruwona is a Scottish-Zimbabwean artist, researcher and film programmer. They explore Afrofuturist storytelling through the poetics of the landscape, working across various media including; digital performance, film and writing. The possibilities of Black technologies as encompassed within Afro-Futurism play a part in the materials that they choose to use and experiment with, which includes the manipulation and relationship between sounds and images. Natasha’s practice is research based and investigates racialised spatialisation in line with Black Feminist Geographies; the recognition of spaces and places in relation to Black identities, as they seek to exclude, further oppress and erase Black communities.
LUX Scotland is a non-profit agency dedicated to supporting, developing and promoting artists’ moving image practices in Scotland. Working at the intersection of the contemporary visual arts and film sectors, its core activities include public exhibition and touring projects, learning and professional development for artists and arts professionals, distribution, commissioning and production support, research and sector advocacy. Established in 2014, LUX Scotland is a part of LUX and is supported by Creative Scotland. luxscotland.org.uk
Glasgow Film is an educational charity which runs Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT), Scotland’s original independent arthouse cinema and the home of film in Glasgow; Glasgow Film Festival (GFF), one of the UK’s leading public celebrations of cinema; and Glasgow Youth Film Festival (GYFF), a fast-growing international three-day festival co-curated by teenage film-lovers in the city. Glasgow Film is also the lead organisation for Film Hub Scotland, a membership organisation that supports more than 200 exhibitors across the country.
Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) is firmly established as a key event in the UK's film calendar. Having grown greatly in significance and as a key launching pad for films in recent years, the festival is one of the top film festivals in the UK. GFF continues to grow and develop its international reputation. The 2022 festival will take place from 2 to 13 March 2022. glasgowfilm.org
Screen Scotland is driving the cultural, social and economic development of all aspects of the sector in Scotland through enhanced funding, services and support and backing from Scottish Government and The National Lottery. Screen Scotland sits within Creative Scotland and works in partnership with Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland, Scottish Funding Council, working in close collaboration with the sector to ensure its success. screen.scot / Twitter / Instagram