The Glasgow-based artist Corin Sworn has been announced as the fifth winner of the bi-annual Max Mara Art Prize for Women. The prize, run in collaboration with London's Whitechapel Gallery, has become increasingly high profile with Laure Prouvost, who picked up Max Mara award in 2011, going on to win last year's Turner Prize.
For Sworn, apart from the press and glory, it means a six-month fully funded Italian residency. Unlike other art prizes, The Max Mara award is based an artist's submission about the work they would produce in Italy, if given the chance. A four-strong judging panel devises a short-list of three to five artists - who have to be UK-based and yet to have a solo survey exhibition - and Sworn out-paced rival presentations from Beatrice Gibson, Melanie Gilligan, Judith Goddard and Philomene Pirecki to pick up this year's award.
Sworn, who uses drawings, video and installation in her works, has an interest in how we construct stories and narratives from fragments of sometimes random information. Foxes, a film and installation, was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2013.
Sworn's Max Mara funded project will look at the relationship between Commedia dell'Arte and Italian cinema. She will spend three months in Rome, before moving to the newly restored Museo dell'Arte Contemporanea in Naples and on to the Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa, home to one of the oldest artist residency programmes in Europe. Which all sounds rather lovely. Sworn's piece will be shown at both the Whitechapel and Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia some time next year.
'She is a vivid storyteller,' explains Whitechapel director Iwona Blazwick, 'and the judges were swept away by her proposal inspired by the 16th century Commedia dell'Arte travelling theatre troupes woven together with oral histories. We can't wait to see the impact of the residency on her scripts and filmmaking.'
For Sworn, it means a level of support that most young artists, without the backing of one of the ‘mega’ galleries, can only dream of. 'One of the wonderful aspects to the Prize is all the people who are there to support the research with you,' says Sworn. 'I think this will allow me to surpass my usual ways of working. With young galleries, it still feels as though everyone is helping out and supporting you and your work, but the nature of what you can produce is very different.'
Sworn's 'The Foxes' installation, 2012, was presented at the Scotland+Venice exhibition in Palazzo Pisani during the 2013 Venice Biennale. The installation illustrated the way objects and images can tell stories.
Sworn's inspiration for 'The Foxes' was a series of slides taken by a social anthropologist during his fieldwork in Peru during the 1970s. The artist used the photographs to explore aspects of imaging, memory, place and oral history.
'The Foxes', 2012, installation view at Scotland+Venice, 2013.
For 'Temporal Arrangements', 2010, Sworn projected shadows of floral arrangements in 20th century vases onto walls, magnifying the silhouettes of the objects.
Still from Sworn's 'Lens Prism', 2010, a film that combines a variety of 19th and 20th century reference points to literature, theory and cinema.
In the film, an actor's monologue bounces back and forth through the refracted historical references.
-
A celestial New York exhibition showcases Roman and Williams’ mastery of lightingLauded design studio Roman and Williams is exhibiting 100 variations of its lighting ‘family tree’ inside a historic Tribeca space
-
‘He immortalised the birth of the supermodel’: inside Dior’s career-spanning retrospective of photographer Peter LindberghOlivier Flaviano, curator and head of Paris’ La Galerie Dior, talks us through a new Peter Lindbergh retrospective, which celebrates the seminal German photographer’s longtime relationship with the French house
-
Take a bite: Laila Gohar and The Luxury Collection’s ‘Cakes & Candles’ are a sweet treat for the sensesLaila Gohar’s six cake-inspired candles draw on The Luxury Collection’s hotels around the world – where guests can enjoy matching edible confections
-
‘I am almost an anti-sculptor’: Dominique White on her Whitechapel Max Mara Art Prize showThe artist mines the ocean to explore Afrofuturism in ‘Deadweight’, opening at London’s Whitechapel and detailed in a new film
-
Dominique White wins Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2022 – 2024Artist Dominique White has been crowned winner of the ninth edition of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, presented in a ceremony at Whitechapel Gallery
-
Sonia Boyce’s Golden Lion-winning Venice Biennale show opens UK debut in MargateIn February 2023, Turner Contemporary, Margate will host British artist Sonia Boyce’s 'Feeling Her Way', which won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the 2022 Venice Biennale
-
Veronica Ryan wins the 2022 Turner PrizeVeronica Ryan, the artist who honoured the Windrush generation, has been named winner of the 2022 Turner Prize in a ceremony held in Liverpool
-
Kiana Hayeri wins Leica photography award for series on Afghan womenLeica has awarded its annual photography prize, the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2022, to Iranian-Canadian Kiana Hayeri for her series Promises Written on the Ice, Left in the Sun
-
Emma Talbot explores Greek myth and femininity at Whitechapel GalleryIn ‘The Age/L’Età’, her Max Mara Art Prize show at Whitechapel Gallery, Emma Talbot imagines a reality where violence is overturned by resolution, nurtured by an elderly female protagonist
-
Turner Prize 2022 shortlist unveiled: meet the artistsTate Liverpool today announced the four-strong shortlist for the Turner Prize 2022: Heather Phillipson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan and Sin Wai Kin
-
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2022: meet the nomineesAs the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize exhibition opens in London, we take a closer look at the 2022 nominees: Anastasia Samoylova, Jo Ractliffe, Deana Lawson, and Gilles Peress
