Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 5
Roman Manfredi and Sayuri Ichida
12th Sept – 20th December 2026
Both artists will be giving a talk on Saturday 12th September at 1pm, followed by an opening reception from 2 till 4pm.
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.
TRA by Roman Manfredi draws inspiration from the ancient Neapolitan figure of the femminiello, a revered presence considered spiritually favourable, the work pays homage to locals who live outside binary gender expectations. The word tra, Italian for a state of being between, among and within, speaks in this work to an energetic space where masculine and feminine converge and dissolve, and categories blur into something more elemental. While dual-spirited identities have often been acknowledged in male-assigned bodies, female-born expressions of gender variance have historically been dismissed or disparaged, often carrying cultural and class-based stigma.
Following the discovery of an archival photograph of the artist’s nonna, in a scene that is seemingly the wedding of two women, Roman wondered whether there may have been another experience of queerness in the family, deepening the desire to explore local histories. Journeying through Napoli, where the landscape is caught between time periods, Roman traces connections between people and place.
Sayuri 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.
Focusing on Niigata Prefecture where Ichida grew up, the artist meticulously documented vacant school buildings. Emphasising the disintegration of these institutions and the communities they once anchored, hand-cut prints of the buildings are rearranged and reassembled as disjointed configurations. The resulting fragmented collages have been screen printed onto chalkboards - a familiar classroom object now too, rendered obsolete.
Whilst rooted in a specific national context, the work speaks to broader concerns around the future of rural life, in an age that sidelines community to prioritise economic growth in the city. The presence of children’s voices in the soundscape interspersed with field recordings from a primary school in Japan, along with children’s drawings from two primary schools in the UK, converge with the absence embodied in the chalkboards, carrying the weight of what has been quietly lost.
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.
Touring partners in Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 5 are Drawing Room and Tannery Arts (London), Barnsley Civic (South Yorkshire), Ffotogallery (Cardiff), and Street Level Photoworks.
Banner Image: 空席 (Kūseki) by Sayuri Ichida created for the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards
Inset Image: TRA by Roman Manfredi created for the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards
