Onyeka Igwe and Morgan Quaintance Jointly Received Jarman Award 2025

Onyeka Igwe and Margan Quaintance jointly received the Jarman Award 2025, presented by Film London, last Tuesday. Whitechapel Gallery will present the winning films, A Radical Duet (2023) and Repetitions (2022), at a special show on 11th December.

Of the awardees, the jury said that ‘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.’

A Radical Duet imagines the meeting of two women across generations in 1947 London, to write a revolutionary play. The jury praised the depth of Igwe’s work, which often uses archival memory to explore anticolonial ideas. Igwe’s our generous mother is currently on display at Tate Britain, exploring the history of University of Ibadan, and the control its students have over this history.

Igwe’s award-winning film the names have changed, including my own and truths have been altered (2019) is currently on show at Bow Arts until the end of December, exploring similar themes through dance.

Quaintance’s film, by contrast, takes a distinctly formalist approach. Acknowledged by the jury as fluent, restless, and distinctive, Repetitions uses stuttering and flickering effects to symbolise and explore the fragility of bodies in industrial patterns of labour.

What unites both films is their maker’s interest in archival footage, its manipulation and expansion in the present day. Exploring different histories, both capitalise on the ubiquity of images in our society today as a window into a forgotten, or even unwritten, history.

Accompanying Quaintance’s most recent project, Available Light (2024), Chelsea Space are presenting a collection of artefacts that influenced the film, from posters, to texts, to film reels. The show closes mid-December.

Morgan Quaintance and Onyeke Igwe received the award from a shortlist of artists including Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah, Karimah Ashadu, George Finlay Ramsay and Hope Pearl Strickland. All shortlisted artists’ films are on display at Whitechapel Gallery until mid-December.