Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) has announced its 2025 Yorkshire Graduate Award winner as Sheffield artist Jim Ever.

Ever is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work spans sound, collage, assemblage, image-making, video, installation, and sculpture. His practice often brings together unexpected materials, exploring the relationship between analogue and digital technologies, and finding new conversations between traditional and experimental methods.

One of his recent projects, Help Needed to Redo Time (to Morning) 2025, is an audio-visual installation exploring Alzheimer’s disease and pays tribute to his grandmother, who lived with the condition. For the work, Ever digitised old cassette tapes of his grandmother singing and playing the piano, combining the recordings with abstract video footage on a CRT television. The installation also features a family photograph depicting a house she had once lived in, which he manipulated with a malfunctioning photocopier. Ever draws a connection between technological breakdown and the fragility of memory. The title of the piece came directly from a note his grandmother had written while living with dementia.

Ever explained:“This work was my way of telling a story about the disease, while also creating something that could educate and provide comfort. It was a chance to preserve and reinterpret something deeply personal in a way that speaks to wider experiences.”

During his residency at YSP, Ever hopes to take inspiration from the Park’s natural landscape and historic trees to create new work that reimagines our relationship with nature. He added:“YSP is a place I have visited many times over the years and has made a significant contribution to the foundation of my practice. My first exposure to Barbara Hepworth’s work was at YSP, and I was inspired by how her The Family of Man sculptures ‘stood’ amongst the trees; they felt like almost an extension of the environment itself.

“Being offered the opportunity to return as a visiting artist is hugely fulfilling, and I believe this will be a major milestone in my practice. I’m looking forward to spending time on site to explore and reinterpret the landscape through my own approaches, and to have the opportunity to experiment.”

Sheffield-born Ever, who recently graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with a BA in Fine Art, will spend two weeks on an artist’s residency at YSP. This will include access to the landscape, facilities and time with the technical team. He will also receive a £750 fee and £250 for materials to develop new ideas, as well as invaluable support from YSP’s curatorial team.

Louise Lohr, YSP’s Deputy Curator added: “We are delighted to be working with Jim as the recipient of this year’s Yorkshire Graduate Award. His thoughtful and experimental practice resonates deeply with YSP’s commitment to supporting artists at pivotal stages of their careers. Jim’s work explores memory, technology and material in ways that are both personal and universal, and we’re excited to see how his residency will engage with the Park’s unique landscape and inspire visitors.”

For over 48 years, artist residencies have been at the heart of YSP, offering opportunities for emerging artists to reflect on and move forward with their creative practice. Launched in 2018 to help nurture regional artistic talent, the Yorkshire Graduate Award attracts an eclectic mix of entries that feature a variety of mediums, including sculpture, installation, performance, film, photography and audio. The annual residency is open to recently graduated BA or MA artists from any Yorkshire-based university.

Last year’s winner, George Moody worked in YSP’s natural landscape to collect and combine water samples from the lake with decomposable bioplastics made from algae. They produced a series of seasonal ‘bio paintings’, experimenting with natural and artificial light forms to activate these works. The residency culminated in a public exhibition over the summer where their work was displayed at YSP in the Boathouse.

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