Jacob Love wins the inaugural Concord Art Prize

Jacob Love wins the Concord Art Prize with his three-channel audio-visual installation, created in response to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s My Favorite Things. Of the ten finalists, his submission was deemed to be a cerebral, contemporary and successful interpretation of the song, by an illustrious panel of judges including artist Mat Collishaw, representatives from the Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martins and Hiscox, alongside Julie Lomax (CEO of a-n The Artists Information Company), Robert Yates of The Observer, and songwriters Mark Ronson and Joan Armatrading CBE. At the heart of this prize, is the notion that great art makes great art, and this is certainly true of Love’s video piece.

He was amongst strong company including artists Anna Kerman, Sam Tahmessabi, Angela Fung, Michal Raz and Olly Fathers whose work can be viewed at the public exhibition, curated by Ali Hillman of Friday Trampoline. His prize was presented at a Private View hosted by Concord Music Publishing at 180 Strand on the 9th September.

Curator Ali Hillman of Friday Trampoline comments, “We were delighted with all of the finalists’ work and felt their contribution to the inaugural Prize was exceptional. We will continue to follow their careers going forward. Jacob’s work proved subversive, thought provoking and timely. For us it stood out as a relevant and contemporary interpretation of this iconic piece of music.”

Sara Lord, SVP International Sync and Project Development at Concord Music Publishing comments, “From Concord’s perspective we were overwhelmed by the scope of all the entries, then we were blown away by the 10 final works, and now, the winning piece by Jacob is quite simply the icing on the cake – and we are so pleased that one of our most beloved songs has inspired his installation.”

Jacob Love’s prize-winning work explores themes of trauma, the autonomic nervous system, human agency, and the sublime. It contains two main elements, a three-channel audio visual installation and an ‘oddly satisfying’ content farm style YouTube channel. His complex piece draws on his experience of somatic therapies such as EDMR and his ongoing research into visceral video content. He is interested in the way platforms such as YouTube and Tiktok interact with our psycho and physiological selves to provoke certain reactions, in particular catharsis. He regards the song My Favorite Things as a description of sensory experiences that people are unconsciously drawn to for relief. He sees self-soothing in the way people have become addicted to screens. In many ways, for Love, platforms such as Tiktok, with their highly sensitive algorithms, construct new mobile lists of ‘our favourite things’. His final piece is an intense video exploration of these complex concepts at the basis of contemporary human experience.