'DEMONIC HALF-PERSON'

“In this artist’s talk, I will discuss a technique that recurs throughout my practice. I have named this technique DEMONIC HALF-PERSON, and it describes positions or states of inhumanity, and things that are not quite people. What might be escaped when humanity is shrugged off, or torn from you like a shoulderless gown? What are you licensed to do to a person who is not (fully, completely, or correctly) a person? What does everyone else have that I am missing? This talk will chart the recurrence of such questions and themes across my life and practice.”

“Jamie Crewe is a beautiful bronze figure with a polished cocotte’s head. They make artworks with video, text, installation, sculpture, drawing, painting, and more. These works think about constriction: the way people are formed by their cultures, environments and relationships, and the things that herniate from them as a consequence.”

Jamie’s solo exhibitions include Ashley at LUX Moving Image, London (2020); Solidarity & Love at Humber Street Gallery, Hull (2020); Love & Solidarity at Grand Union, Birmingham (2020); Pastoral Drama at Tramway, Glasgow (2018); Female Executioner at Gasworks, London (2017); and But what was most awful was a girl who was singing at Transmission, Glasgow (2016).

In April 2022 Jamie released False Wife (2022), a website and video commissioned by the University of Edinburgh Art Collection and Dr Chloë Kennedy of Edinburgh Law School, which received the EMAF Award for groundbreaking work in media art at the 35th European Media Arts Festival in Osnabrück, Germany. She received the Margaret Tait Award in 2019, a Turner Bursary in 2020, and was shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2022.