Sarah Forrest wins Margaret Tait Award

Sarah Forrest is announced as recipient of 2017 Margaret Tait Award

Just announced at Glasgow Film Festival tonight, the winner of this year’s Margaret Tait Award is MFA graduate Sarah Forrest. The annual prize sees Forrest awarded a £10,000 commission to produce a new work to be presented at Glasgow Film Festival in 2018.
The award was founded in 2010 to support experimental and innovative artists working within film and moving image, and is named after the great Orcadian filmmaker, poet and artist Margaret Tait (1918–99), whose documentaries were pioneering in the field of experimental filmmaking.
Accepting the award, Forrest cites Tait’s impact on her own practice. “[Tait’s] work and approach as a filmmaker and writer has been influential for me, so to receive an award that celebrates her legacy is a humbling experience,” said Forrest. “So too was my inclusion in a shortlist of such incredible artists.”
Forrest explains that the new work she proposes will begin with a period of research on the Isle of Lewis. “I will be looking initially at the island’s rich history of prophetic ‘second sight’,” she explains, “drawing from stories that I heard from my mother who grew up there. This work will build on recurring themes in my practice that look at appearance, perception, doubt and belief, with the commission being an exciting and significant opportunity for me to explore these in a longer form work.”
Forrest is a graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee, and gained her masters from Glasgow School of Art in 2010, during which time she also studied at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.
Forrest has held solo exhibitions at CCA in Glasgow (Two Solo Shows: Sarah Forrest and Mounira Al Sohl in 2013), Supplement in London (I Left it on Page 32 in 2014) and Kunstraum Dusseldorf in Germany (Again, it objects in 2016). Her work has been presented at international film festivals, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2014) and she has completed numerous residencies, among these the inaugural Margaret Tait Residency in 2012.
Nicole Yip, director of LUX Scotland, who support the award along with Creative Scotland, said “Forrest is an artist who really exemplifies the level of ambition and tireless commitment to the moving image form that the award seeks to recognise. In tracing the arc of her development since undertaking the Margaret Tait Residency in 2012, we have been so impressed by the way Sarah’s work has evolved and how her distinctive sensibilities in using sound and image have now become a hallmark of her practice. We are excited to see where her exploratory approach will take her in a new longer-form project and look forward to supporting her in shaping her vision for this new work.”
Forrest's win was announced at the world premiere of Charity, the new film by Kate Davis, winner of last year's Margaret Tait Award. Previous Margaret Tait Award recipients include Duncan Marquiss, Rachel Maclean, Stephen Sutcliffe, Anne-Marie Copestake, and Torsten Lauschmann.