Oreet Ashery wins the Film London Jarman Award for her risky and fearless work

Jerusalem-born, London-based artist Oreet Ashery has won the Film London Jarman Award which annually recognises artists working within the medium of moving image. Oreet’s work was chosen for “her risky, fearless and often satirical work,” which has the ability to “break taboos and challenges audiences”.

The award aims to celebrate work which “celebrates the spirit of experimentation, imagination and innovation in the work of UK-based artist filmmakers". Oreet’s films display these artistic tendencies and characteristics by mixing both live performance and music in Party for Freedom, which “questions both the traditions of hippy liberalism and the rise of far right popularism”. Another, Revisiting Genesis, is a web-based film series tackling “modern attitudes to death,” the award organisers explain. “The work combines real life subjects and fictional characters in a narrative that questions the modern death industry and its relationship to technology — from digital wills that organise online assets to a posthumous video email service.”

On the chosen award winner Adrian Wootton the chief executive of Film London and the British Film Commission says: “Oreet Ashery is a fitting winner for the tenth Film London Jarman Award as her mercurial, ever-evolving work is nigh-on impossible to pigeonhole. She has spent her entire career pushing the boundaries of moving image as an art form, and it’s this questing restlessness of spirit that we set out to champion when the Award was first established.”

Oreet has previously exhibited work at ICA, the Victoria and Albert museum and has her work in collections of the Tate and the Brooklyn Museum. The artist will receive £10,000 as part of the Film London Jarman Award and a commission from Channel 4’s Random Acts. The shortlisted artists will also receive a commission from Channel 4 and at last night’s award ceremony, Chu-Li Shewring won the Jules Wright Prize of £5000, celebrating a female creative technician.

Previous winners of the award include Duncan Campbell, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and Luke Fowler, and subsequently each of these artists went on to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize.