Fern Brady wins at Sky Arts Awards
Fern Brady was amongst the winners at the inaugural Sky Arts Awards.
The ceremony, which took place at The Roundhouse in London tonight (17th September), follows on from the South Bank Sky Arts Awards in aiming to celebrate achievements across the entire spectrum of the arts.
Brady won the Comedy award for her body of work, which includes her stand-up shows and her book, Strong Female Character.
She was presented with the prize by Munya Chawawa:
Also nominated in the category were Blindboyboatclub (for The Blindboy podcast) and Julia Masli (for live show ha ha ha ha ha ha ha).
The awards were presented by Joe Lycett, who - ahead of the ceremony - published a A Manifesto for the Arts
The other winners were Ryan Calais Cameron (theatre), Boy Blue (dance), Mr Bates Vs The Post Office (TV), Death in Venice (opera), James MacMillan (classical music), How To Have Sex (film), Lindsey Mendick (visual art), Momtaza Mehri's Bad Diaspora Poems (poetry), Paul Murray for The Bee Sting, The Last Dinner Party (popular music), opera singer Aigul Akhmetshina (Times Breakthrough Award) and Lord Melvyn Bragg (Lifetime Achievement Award).
All winners were presented with an award designed and made by Jim Moir. On creating the statuettes, he said: "[Sky executive] Phil Edgar-Jones asked if I could make the awards so I showed some of my previous sculptures, one that was an homage to Eduardo Paolozzi's Cyclops. I used this as inspiration for the trophies and began collecting lots of different materials, adding them onto the clay mould. The finished pieces are bronze sculptures standing roughly 1 foot tall, they're heavy too at four kilograms so will fit perfectly on a mantlepiece... or used as doorstop!"
Phil Edgar-Jones comments: "The Sky Arts Awards is a unique opportunity to bring the very best of our art and entertainment stars together all in one place. We passionately believe everyone should have access to the arts to enrich our lives and bring us all the joy of a better experience. Arts, culture, entertainment, music, storytelling, the visual arts - whatever you're into we believe it's something we do better than anywhere else in the world and at Sky Arts we will never stop banging on about how important arts and culture is... and we are thrilled that Joe Lycett is banging that drum with us."