Film Festival presents artist with award

GLASGOW Film Festival has presented the 2017 Margaret Tait Award to Glasgow-based artist Sarah Forrest, pictured below.

Forrest will receive a £10,000 commission to produce a new work to be presented at Glasgow Film Festival in 2018.

Supported by Creative Scotland and LUX, the Award was founded in 2010 to support experimental and innovative artists working within film and moving image.

Margaret Tait (1918–99) was an Orcadian filmmaker and writer whose film poems, hand-painted animations and documentaries were pioneering in the field of experimental filmmaking.

After studying at Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee, Sarah Forrest gained her masters from Glasgow School of Art in 2010, during which time she also studied at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. She is going to use the money to make a film on the Isle of Lewis which will explore the idea of “second sight” and the Brahan Seer. “I like making fiction that peels back the skin of reality,” she said.

Forrest has held solo exhibitions at CCA in Glasgow, Supplement in London, and Kunstraum Dusseldorf in Germany. Her work has been presented at international film festivals and she has completed numerous residencies, among these the inaugural Margaret Tait Residency in 2012.

The award is given to an experimental Scottish or Scotland-based artist who has established a significant body of work within film and moving image over the past three to 10 years, and who is able to demonstrate the impact the award will have upon their practice. glasgowfilm.org/ glasgow-film-festival