Professor Daria Martin wins Jarman prize

Adrian Wootton, Chief Executive of Film London and the British Film Commission, said:

“I am delighted that the 11th Film London Jarman Award will honour the work of Daria Martin, whose long-running practice has seen her constantly challenge herself, creating an eclectic and expansive body of work that has explored everything from dreams and mythology to technology and feminism. The past 11 years have seen a significant rise in audiences for artists’ filmmaking, and it is important to recognise Martin’s considerable contribution to this shift in the popularity and ubiquity of the medium.”

Daria Martin works across moving image and performance. Her enigmatic films mix the naturalistic with the surreal, creating multisensory spaces of the imagination. Her subject matter has ranged from her grandmother’s dream diaries to working with robots, choreographers and card magic. Her works are beautifully composed with an ethereal quality and an aesthetic that moves from cinema to 1960s instructional film. She has frequently worked in collaboration with scientists and has twice won Wellcome Trust awards.

Daria's 16mm films aim to create a continuity or parity between disparate artistic media (such as painting and performance), between people and objects, and between internal and social worlds. Human gesture and seductive imagery meet physically mannered artifice to pry loose viewers’ learned habits of perception.  

At St John's, and at the Ruskin School of Art, Daria teaches freely across artistic media and disciplines. She has shown work at the Tate Modern, Tate Britain, and The Wellcome Collection, London, and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Daria will be having a solo exhibition called 'Tonight the world' at the Barbican Centre Curve Gallery from 30 January- 7 April 2019.

To find out more please read Daria's interview in The Guardian.