‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is an ongoing commissioning and development initiative that is the product of a new set of awards for film and video artists within five years of starting their professional practice. In the project’s inaugural year, the first artists to receive the Jerwood/Film and Video Umbrella Awards were Ed Atkins, Emma Hart, Naheed Raza and Corin Sworn.
Each artist has been awarded a bursary to develop pre-production proposals for a significant new work. These trailers, previews or outline concepts were presented in a group exhibition at JVA at Jerwood Space, London.
The ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ exhibition considered the artists’ own individual ‘projects for the future’ against the larger theme of ‘futures past’ and ‘futures lost’. As well as individual calling-cards for artists for whom a bright future can be confidently predicted, the project also offered reminders of the fleeting nature or the untapped potential of earlier manifestations of the future, and a wider reflection on the uncertainties of futurology.