Visual Art

Lindsey Mendick for SH*TFACED - WINNER

Lindsey Mendick’s exhibition SH*TFACED captured the audience’s imagination, throwing them into the collective anxiety of nightclub years and paranoid nightmares. The exhibition, comprised of four parts, was initially inspired by the nation’s favourite author Robert Louis Stevenson, the dark tale of Jekyll and Hyde, but also the nation’s dirty little secret – its relationship with drink. Mendick’s exhibition explored abandonment, vulnerability, moral turpitude and searing honesty to consider our desires, behaviours and regrets in a new light: guilt, despair, a ‘fuck it’ pursuit of enjoyment and the inevitable end.

Soheila Sokhanvari for Rebel Rebel  

A site-specific installation that creates a devotional space for visitors to contemplate rarely told feminist histories, the exhibition featured 28 exquisite miniature portraits of feminist icons from pre-revolutionary Iran hung against a hand-painted floor to ceiling mural based on Islamic geometries.  

The exhibition pays tribute to the significant courage of these 27 female icons, who pursued their careers in a culture enamoured with Western style but not its freedoms. 

Steve McQueen for Grenfell 

In December 2017, artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen made an artwork in response to the fire that took place earlier that year on 14 June at Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, West London. 72 people died in the tragedy. Filming the tower before it was covered with hoarding, McQueen sought to create a record so that it would not be forgotten. 

Following the fire, a Government Inquiry was launched. Four years since the publication of the Phase One report, the recommendations are yet to be implemented, meaning a similar tragedy could happen again and there is an ongoing criminal investigation. Following its presentation at Serpentine the work has been placed in the care of Tate and the Museum of London’s Collection.