Public Preview: Thursday 7 May, 6-8pm. All welcome!
Expanded photography works using still and moving image, sound and installation by Roman Manfredi and Sayuri Ichida will be presented as two solo shows within one UK touring exhibition throughout 2026 as awardees of the fifth Jerwood/Photoworks Awards.
Both series of new works look at specific locations and share reflections on broader society. While both artists attempt to depict what is not always visible, Ichida explores how shifting landscapes quietly reshape the fabric of community life, and Roman reflects on how communities remain tethered to landscapes held still, frozen in time and memory.
Roman’s work titled TRA exists in the liminal, hinting at transformation, motion without destination. It speaks to a state of being between, among, and within, an energetic space where masculine and feminine converge and dissolve, where categories blur into something more elemental. Using still and moving images, portraits, film and fragments, Roman journeys through Napoli, where the landscape is caught between time periods and the relationship between people, personal identity and place is intuitive, felt, embodied, and ancient.
Ichida’s work, 空席 (Kūseki), meaning “empty seats”, addresses Japan’s rapid population decline, with rural communities among the hardest hit. Between 2002 and 2020, nearly 9,000 schools closed, with around 450 more shutting down each year. As birth rates fall and towns shrink, schools, once central to daily life, stand empty, their presence quietly fading from the landscape. The presentation of Kūseki spans across photography, collage, sound and sculptural installation in an effort to respond to this ongoing disappearance.
Launched in 2015, the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards are a biennial major commissioning opportunity open to all UK based artists using photography and within the first ten years of their career. The Jerwood/Photoworks Awards offer the awardees the opportunity to make ambitious new work and significantly develop their practice at a pivotal moment in their career. Previous recipients have included Joanne Coates, Heather Agyepong, Silvia Rosi, Theo Simpson, Alejandra Carles-Tolra, Sam Laughlin, Lúa Ribeira, Matthew Finn, Joanna Piotrowska and Tereza Zelenková.
