Silent carnivals, kabaddi players and home videos: Jarman award shortlist announced
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- Film London has shortlisted Sadia Pineda Hameed, Ilona Sagar, Rhea Storr and Alia Syed for the 2026 Jarman Award, a £10,000 prize recognising British artists working with moving images; the jury praised the four for "poetic sensitivity and experimentation."
- Sadia Pineda Hameed's five-channel film Anak Where Did We Stay? mixes family camcorder footage with archive material on Beatlemania and Enoch Powell protests to trace her mother's migration from the Philippines to Britain, framed in dialogue with Joshua Reynolds' 1776 painting Portrait of Omai.
- Rhea Storr's 2025 film New Territories (Spectacle Is King) strips the sound from footage of UK summer carnivals to contrast vibrant costumes — dancers in blue facepaint, stilt-walkers — with the mundane British high streets they pass through; the work responds directly to Isaac Julien's 1984 documentary Territories on the Notting Hill carnival.
- Ilona Sagar's two-channel film The Body Blow investigates asbestos and mesothelioma-related illness in Barking and Dagenham, taking its name from a 1962 radio ballad by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and producer Charles Parker that combined folk songs with polio-survivor recordings.
- Alia Syed's 2019 video diary Snow repurposes footage her father shot on a snowy day in the winter of 1995/6, during a period when the artist and her father were not on speaking terms; Syed, born in Swansea, works between London and Glasgow.
- The winner will be announced on 24 November 2026 at a London ceremony, with all four shortlisted artists' work shown at the Whitechapel Gallery from 17 November to 13 December, and touring venues across the UK beforehand.
- The Jarman Award, now in its 19th year and named after the radical film-maker Derek Jarman, has previously shortlisted artists including Charlotte Prodger, Laure Prouvost, Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Heather Phillipson, many of whom went on to Turner prize shortlists or wins; last year's prize was split between Onyeka Igwe and Morgan Quaintance.
Why it matters: The Jarman Award has a documented track record as a Turner Prize incubator: past shortlists include Charlotte Prodger, Laure Prouvost, Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Heather Phillipson, who went on to be shortlisted for or win the Turner. For the four 2026 nominees, the shortlist itself is a major career signal, and the £10,000 prize and Whitechapel Gallery exhibition give the winner a high-visibility platform in the British contemporary art world.
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