tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/turner-prize-10288/articles
Turner Prize – The Conversation
2023-04-27T12:11:48Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204589
2023-04-27T12:11:48Z
2023-04-27T12:11:48Z
Why the Turner prize shortlist is a cultural barometer of our political times
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523177/original/file-20230427-546-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C4%2C1431%2C640&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shortlisted artist Barbara Walker's work explores issues of racial identity and interrogates Britain's past. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/boundary-ii-310577">Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The UK’s biggest prize for contemporary art is back. <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/towner-eastbourne/turner-prize-2023">The 2023 Turner prize</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/apr/27/turner-prize-pandemic-problems-and-windrush-scandal-among-shortlist">shortlist</a> has been announced featuring British artists <a href="https://bravenewwhat.org/">Jesse Darling</a>, <a href="https://www.rorypilgrim.com/%5D">Rory Pilgrim</a>, <a href="https://artreview.com/ghislaine-leung-balances-maxwell-graham-review/">Ghislaine Leung</a> and <a href="https://www.barbarawalker.co.uk/">Barbara Walker</a>. </p>
<p>An exhibition of the artists’ work will go on show at <a href="https://townereastbourne.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/turner-prize-2023">Towner Eastbourne</a> from 28 September to 14 April 2024 with the winner announced on 5 December.</p>
<p>A prize awarded for an outstanding presentation of an individual artist’s work is not only a chance to pick favourites but an opportunity to discuss the issues it explores, the people involved, the funders, formats and contexts.</p>
<p>My research often focuses on how art and politics have intersected during the past few decades. With a whirlwind 40-year socio-political history this lens can be applied to the prize. </p>
<h2>From Thatcher’s 1980s to Channel 4’s 1990s</h2>
<p>The Turner prize began in 1984 against the backdrop of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/08/what-is-thatcherism-margaret-thatcher">Thatcherism</a>. An annual competition to draw media interest and private sponsors made sense in the context of reduced public funding for the arts and an era of competitive individualism.</p>
<p>A civilised affair pitching established painters and sculptors and conceptual artists against each other – the first six winners were white men, as were 28 of 32 the artists shortlisted. </p>
<p>Things changed in 1991 with Channel 4 as a hip new sponsor and a ban on artists over 50. The prize would raise interest in a newly youthful, increasingly fashionable area of UK culture.</p>
<p>The 1990s prizes are remembered for <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/y/young-british-artists-ybas">Young British Art</a>. Graduating from art school in the Thatcher era, Young British Artists (YBAs) were well aware of the limited opportunities to build state-funded careers so acted like entrepreneurs and experts in self-promotion.</p>
<p>They staged their own exhibitions in empty warehouses, made “shocking” art with unconventional materials (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/nov/01/20yearsoftheturnerprize.turnerprize8">sharks</a>, <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/turner-prize-1998/turner-prize-1998-artists-chris-ofili">dung</a>, <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/turner-prize-1999">unmade beds</a>) and sensational subject matter (pornography, violence, tabloid sleaze). Faux outrage from the tabloid press made artists into household names (Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin).</p>
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<p>Much of this felt Thatcherite, but there was something youthful and trendy and edgy about art that jarred with the warm beer and cricket pitches neoliberalism favoured by early 1990s Tories. It sat much more comfortably in New Labour’s
“<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/12/cultural-capital-rise-fall-creative-britain-robert-hewison-review">Creative Britain</a>”.</p>
<p>This was still a nation of entrepreneurial individuals with no interest in 1970s things, like collective bargaining or common ownership of utilities. But Creative Britain was modern and hip – it was Britpop, football and contemporary art.</p>
<p>The televised celebrity-strewn Channel 4 under 50s version of the Turner prize was part of this – feeding the feel-good 1990s vibes, fuelled by PR and underwritten by a debt-driven boom.</p>
<h2>2000’s third way</h2>
<p>New Labour soon gave up on looking hip – remember the introduction of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2004/jan/27/tuitionfees.students">university tuition fees</a>, deregulated markets and the invasion of Iraq. Some of the tax income from a seemingly buoyant economy was spent on the arts, which were newly redefined as consumer services and required to prove value and efficiency using metrics.</p>
<p>Increased public arts spending provided artists with a sort of freedom. No longer required to whip up controversy or appeal to collectors like Saatchi, Turner prize art came to feel more insularly artistic with <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/michael-raedecker-2693">abstract painting</a> and installations like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2013/sep/03/martin-creed-lights-on-off">light bulbs going on and off</a>.</p>
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<p>Occasionally it was political. Mark Wallinger, <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/turner-prize-2007/turner-prize-2007-artists-mark-wallinger">2007’s winner</a>, meticulously replicated <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jun/20/brian-haw-protesting-to-end">Brian Haw’s peace camp</a>, which the campaigner had lived in for 10 years in Parliament Square, at Tate Britain.</p>
<p>Titled <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wallinger-state-britain-t14844">State Britain</a>, it was created when Tony Blair passed a law to make it <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/oct/12/houseofcommons.comment">illegal to protest within a mile of Parliament</a>. Positioned across the perimeter of the one mile from Parliament no-protest-zone, it probed a line between art and politics.</p>
<h2>2008’s financial crash and a new outlook</h2>
<p>In 2008, the <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/financial-crisis-review.asp#:%7E:text=The%202008%20financial%20crisis%20began,their%20savings%2C%20and%20their%20homes.">credit-fuelled</a> capitalism championed by Blair and Thatcher crashed the global economy and the Turner prize couldn’t find a corporate sponsor.</p>
<p>The coalition government formed in 2010 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/oct/20/arts-cuts-spending-review-council">cut arts funding by a third</a>. Shortlisted Turner prize art from that time didn’t say much about austerity or that moment, instead looking a lot like the art of the early 2000s.</p>
<p>For historians <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/hegemony-now/alex-williams/jeremy-gilbert/9781786633149">Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams</a>, the period after the 1990s was marked by a feeling of stasis linked to the widespread acceptance that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot">neoliberal capitalism</a> was here to stay. What Thatcher imposed, Blair accepted. It became difficult to imagine alternatives.</p>
<p>But the art prize was changing as Britain was. Collectives, community and a gentle critique of the traditional Turner prize format all became important.</p>
<p>Anti-austerity movements found a home alongside trade unions in a Labour Party reimagined under the radically social democratic leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. The movement for Black Lives pointed to a history, culture and economy of institutionalised racism.</p>
<p>The 2015 winner, <a href="https://assemblestudio.co.uk/projects/turner-prize-exhibition">Assemble</a>, were not artists at all, but a collective of architects who worked with communities to create imaginative housing and buildings and resources.</p>
<p>The shortlisted artists in 2019 asked to <a href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/2019-turner-prize-winner-1721373">share the award</a>, using “the occasion … to make a statement in the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity” and turning themselves into a collective.</p>
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<p>The 2021 shortlist <a href="https://www.wallpaper.com/art/turner-prize-2021-shortlist-announcement#:%7E:text=Tate%20Britain%20has%20just%20unveiled,Radical%2C%20and%20Project%20Art%20Works.">consisted only of collectives</a>, many of which worked with communities in ways that felt more like education or outreach than what some people call art.</p>
<p>The prize also became more aware of its past limitations, prejudices and oversights. <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lubaina-himid-cbe-ra-2356/turner-prize-2017-biography">Lubaina Himid</a>, aged 62, was named winner in 2017, after the Turner prize <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/may/03/older-artists-on-turner-prize-shortlist-after-it-axes-upper-age-limit">age cap was dropped</a>. In 2022 it was <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/turner-prize-2022/veronica-ryan">Veronica Ryan</a>, aged 66. Ingrid Pollard, aged 69, was also shortlisted in 2022.</p>
<p>All three had been active since the 1980s, making work that engaged, often playfully and poetically, with colonialism and racism and identity. None of them featured in shortlists from the 1980s or 1990s or 2000s.</p>
<p>The 2023 shortlisted artists share a concern with the experience of hostile, exhausting and strangely fragile systems: the late-capitalist demand to be constantly productive while continually undervalued, the absurd cruelty of bureaucratic governance and the precarity of climates and bodies. </p>
<p>A lot of their art is about the effort to stay afloat or even just to cope. By implication, the work conveys something about the failure of institutions to provide either basic support or transformative change. Hope is found instead in a politics of community and care, vulnerability and interconnection, which offers occasional glimpses of better worlds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204589/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benedict Burbridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
From the shock tactics of 90s artists starved of public funding to a pivot towards an art based in community and activism today.
Benedict Burbridge, Head of Art History at University of Sussex, University of Sussex
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/139491
2020-05-28T11:18:27Z
2020-05-28T11:18:27Z
Turner Prize bursaries could signal a turn toward a more cooperative art world
<p>The chair of the Turner Prize jury, Alex Farquharson, surprised the art world when he announced that the 2020 prize will be <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/turner-prize-show-2020-is-cancelled">replaced by ten bursaries of £10,000 each</a>. This decision could signal a change in the way the British art world operates and a potential step towards a more diverse and equitable industry in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.</p>
<p>Founded in 1984, the <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/turner-prize">Turner Prize</a> is one of the most prestigious awards on the UK art scene. Awarded annually to an artist who works primarily in Britain, or who was born in Britain and works overseas, the award has a major impact on the recipient’s career prospects. Celebrity artists Damien Hirst and Grayson Perry rank among the list of former winners, and Tracey Emin was catapulted into the media when her installation <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/emin-my-bed-l03662">My Bed</a> was among the nominees in 1999. </p>
<p>An award for contemporary art is bound to attract controversy, and the Turner Prize has received more than its share of criticism. While Prince Charles is reported to have asserted that the award had “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/turner-prize/8834871/The-Turner-Prizes-most-controversial-moments.html">contaminated</a>” Britain’s art establishment, the art group known as the <a href="https://www.stuckism.com/realturner.html">Stuckists</a> suggested in 2000 that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The only artist who wouldn’t be in danger of winning The Turner Prize is Turner.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Turner’s last wishes</h2>
<p>Joseph Mallord William Turner would have been pleased to see a prize named in his honour. He was a generous artist, bequeathing over 300 paintings and thousands of sketches to the British nation upon his death in 1851. He also made a bequest to the Royal Academy of Arts in London and left a substantial cash sum in his will for the establishment of a hospital and almshouses for artists who had fallen on hard times. Yet Turner’s posthumous wishes were not fulfilled in the way the artist had hoped. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338071/original/file-20200527-20237-1mhswrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338071/original/file-20200527-20237-1mhswrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338071/original/file-20200527-20237-1mhswrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338071/original/file-20200527-20237-1mhswrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338071/original/file-20200527-20237-1mhswrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338071/original/file-20200527-20237-1mhswrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338071/original/file-20200527-20237-1mhswrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Joseph Mallord William Turner’s Fishermen at Sea, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner#/media/File:Joseph_Mallord_William_Turner_-_Fishermen_at_Sea_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>His paintings were ultimately divided between the National Gallery and the Tate (now Tate Britain), the hospital was not built, and the support for so-called “decayed” artists did not materialise. Ironically, during the current pandemic, Turner’s hopes of supporting wider communities of artists may eventually be coming to fruition.</p>
<p>Of the £40,000 Turner Prize monies, the winner typically receives £25,000 and the three other shortlisted artists receive £5,000 each. In 2019, however, the four finalists – Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani – asked to be considered as a group in a gesture of “<a href="https://turnercontemporary.org/news/03/12/2019/winners-turner-prize-2019/">commonality, multiplicity and solidarity</a>”. The prize monies were shared equally between them.</p>
<p>The Tate’s decision to award ten bursaries instead of giving the Turner Prize to an individual is an extension of this collective approach. The decision has been taken, in part, for practical reasons. The current situation is hardly conducive to physical art viewing and jury deliberations. But there may be something more to learn from this temporary suspension of the Turner Prize.</p>
<p>With social distancing policies in force, museums around the world have faced disruption and, at least, temporary closure. Major art fairs and biennials have been postponed and auctions seriously curtailed. The negative impact of these developments on artists’ exhibition prospects, opportunities, and livelihoods has been dramatic. It has forced many to consider what the art world will look like post-pandemic. </p>
<h2>Art world for all</h2>
<p>The art market has traditionally been a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17510694.2016.1154651">winner-take-all</a> environment in which only a few artists command the highest prices. However, in the wake of the current crisis, it might be possible to realise a more diverse and democratic art sector.</p>
<p>The unfolding history of the Turner Prize hints at this possibility. As artists themselves advocate for a collective approach to the award of prize monies and arts councils and institutions rethink the range of support they provide to individuals and groups, it is tempting to think that we’re witnessing the emergence of a more solidaristic creative economy. The upshot of this could benefit artists and their publics in various ways: a more diverse art world, wider funding options, enhanced institutional support for artists, less focus on celebrity. An increased number of smaller grants could offer a vital lifeline to artists in the early stages of their careers or encourage them to embark on riskier, innovative projects. </p>
<p>Turner’s portrait appears against the background of one of his most famous paintings, <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-fighting-temeraire">The Fighting Temeraire</a>, on the current £20 British banknote. Nestled in the lower right-hand corner of the note is a copy of Turner’s signature as it appears on his will. As this year’s bursaries are handed over to ten artists instead of one, perhaps the British art world has drawn a little closer to Turner’s last wishes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139491/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Brown receives funding from the Independent Social Research Foundation for the project 'Private Power and Museums:
Redressing the Impact of Inequality on Artworld Institutions'.
. </span></em></p>
This more equitable approach might bring the prize closer to Turner’s original vision of his legacy.
Kathryn Brown, Lecturer in Art History, Loughborough University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/128461
2019-12-10T02:41:02Z
2019-12-10T02:41:02Z
(Almost) everyone’s a winner? Art is meant to break rules and prizes must adapt
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305794/original/file-20191209-90580-1xhreww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">British artists (L-R) Oscar Murillo, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Tai Shani celebrate after being announced as the joint winners of Turner Prize 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Vickie Flores/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week Britain’s Turner Prize for visual art was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/03/turner-prize-2019-lawrence-abu-hamdan-helen-cammock-oscar-murillo-and-tai-shani-shared">announced</a>. For the first time, the award went to a collective instead of the usual singular winner. The four finalists – Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo, Tai Shani and Lawrence Abu Hamden – came together “to make a statement in the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity – in art as in society”. The judges agreed and the single prize was shared. </p>
<p>There were, of course, negative <a href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-world-reacts-to-turner-prize-2019-1721598">responses</a>. Tenuous links were made to joint <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/14/booker-prize-judges-break-the-rules-and-insist-on-joint-winners">Booker</a> prize winners and even those who had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/02/bad-sex-award-twosome-prize-goes-to-didier-decoin-and-john-harvey">shared</a> the dubious bad sex writing gong. </p>
<p>While there has been outcry – the usual media and social hyperbole about the artists changing the rules, creating themselves as multiple winners, and making everyone a winner – art is meant to break rules. And prizes must adapt.</p>
<h2>Walking the walk</h2>
<p>This hasn’t happened before. But why is that a shock? We’re talk about contemporary art, after all. To recast the late Robert Hughes’ <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/542639.The_Shock_of_the_New">book</a> title, the “shock of the new” continues in art, even if it’s a very, very, mild shock in this case.</p>
<p>The important issue in this win is the nature of the four artists’ work chosen for the final show. All four are working in and around similar themes of societal exclusion. The critical point is that their mutual decision is very much in line with their practices. It is a strengthening of their voices and truth. This can only be a good thing for their art, its reception and just as importantly, for other artists that work in similar ways.</p>
<p>While the joint Turner Prize was about the collective action of the finalists, the Booker judges’ decision was about not, by necessity, making the invidious call between two deserving candidates. Neither of these decisions were about an “everyone is a winner” mentality.</p>
<p>There are of course inherent flaws in any prize situation. Judges need to be discriminating and this can be either positive or negative, or even both.</p>
<p>I have been part of this process, as both a contestant and a judge. I have been on the judging panel for the Blake, Clancy and Strathfield art prizes. Both sides of a prize need to be taken with a grain of salt. </p>
<h2>Being judged</h2>
<p>As an artist, there is something to be said for being in most prize exhibitions and I do hope to be at least a finalist again. The prizes are in some ways a reality check about what I am making as an artist. </p>
<p>Artmaking for me is about constant doubt. Is this the best of what I am doing? Will anyone else get it (yet)? </p>
<p>Selection as a finalist is a recognition by judges that people are finding their own voice, tenacity and truth. For an artist the exhibition is a confidence builder against this necessary doubt. </p>
<p>As a judge, you can see that conviction in the works. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1202016099367342080"}"></div></p>
<p>There are also the simply pragmatic questions for artists about putting a work into competitions. Who is judging? What will it cost to prepare and transport the work? Is it worth it? (On the cost issue I do have a related question about competitions charging entry fees for artists and then charging the audience.)</p>
<h2>Judging</h2>
<p>On the other side of the equation are the judges and what direction the judging panel may take. As the judge of art prizes, I’ve witnessed intense and focussed deliberations but also vividly recall one instance when a fellow judge got very hot-headed and upset about the course of events.</p>
<p>That heat seemed mostly to be about self-righteousness and less about the openness needed to take on the new and unexplored in art.</p>
<p>Are prizes are relevant? If you win, yes, you bet! It isn’t just about the money, but that money can be a really good leg up for many artists on low incomes. My first car came from prize money and it made moving art materials around a whole lot easier. </p>
<p>Prizes are about recognition that goes beyond 15 minutes of fame. Prizes also present the important question of where to go next.</p>
<p>Ultimately, this year’s Turner Prize helps keep contemporary art and practice in the public domain and sparks engagement. Liking or dismissing the artworks or the judging are all possible but wrestling with the work is so much better.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1201998935826546690"}"></div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lachlan Warner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Why are we so surprised that artists are also demanding changes to the way prizes are awarded?
Lachlan Warner, Australian Catholic University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84811
2017-10-05T09:52:32Z
2017-10-05T09:52:32Z
Shock of the old as revitalised Turner Prize sets its stage
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188610/original/file-20171003-31655-u75qco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lubaina Himid's A Fashionable Marriage.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate Britain</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Much has been made of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/mar/29/turner-prize-artists-over-50-now-eligible-anish-kapoor">rule change</a> that has removed the age barrier which previously disallowed anyone from over the age of 50 for consideration for the Turner Prize. And the announcement of a <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/press/press-releases/turner-prize-2017-shortlist-announced">four-person shortlist</a> of which two of the artists are over 50 shows how important that rule change has turned out to be.</p>
<p>The shortlist has been hailed as the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/sep/25/turner-prizes-diverse-shortlist-powerful-political-statement">most international to date</a>”. Work submitted by the four shortlisted artists: Lubaina Himid (born in 1954), Hurvin Anderson (1965), Andrea Buttner (1972) and Rosalind Nashashibi (1973) is diverse and political in equal measure. As Tate Britain director and Turner Prize chair, Alex Farquharson told The Guardian: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s certainly an embrace of multiculturalism and I think in that sense it’s reflective of British art and society. The jurists are particularly interested in the transnational, the cross-cultural this year.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Since its inception in 1984, the <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/ferens-art-gallery/exhibition/turner-prize-2017">annual Turner Prize</a> has produced some memorable moments over the years. The prize has brought art to a new, mainstream audience and has arguably helped shape attitudes to wider British culture. </p>
<h2>Lubaina Himid</h2>
<p>The lifting of the age restriction makes for a markedly different tone which allows space for work to stand on its own terms and for voices to be heard. The exhibition feels coherent and signals a shift away from irony. But there is humour here – it’s biting and significant. A strategy long exemplified by artist/activist Lubaina Himid. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188611/original/file-20171003-12163-13hfuiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188611/original/file-20171003-12163-13hfuiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188611/original/file-20171003-12163-13hfuiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188611/original/file-20171003-12163-13hfuiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188611/original/file-20171003-12163-13hfuiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188611/original/file-20171003-12163-13hfuiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188611/original/file-20171003-12163-13hfuiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188611/original/file-20171003-12163-13hfuiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shortlisted artist Lubaina Hibid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate Britain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Set upon a low plinth that doubles as a stage produced from an assemblage of sheet ply and card, is her early key work A Fashionable Marriage (1986).</p>
<p>It feels fresher than ever – it is a riot of texture, colour and, through its sheer presence, immediately engages. As a satire on political relations it is a biting rewrite of Hogarth’s suite of paintings from the 1740s titled <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/william-hogarth-marriage-a-la-mode-1-the-marriage-settlement">Marriage A la Mode</a>. Himid’s version was meant as a protest piece on the political love-in between Reagan and Thatcher – but has found new purchase in light of the current state of US/UK relations. It’s a piece which has again found its place in time. It remains her best work. </p>
<p>Other works by Himid include sets of dinnerware to which the artist has added in paint her own set of slave trade-era characters. There is also a series of similar works experimenting with pages of The Guardian newspaper that have caught her attention. Nothing odd about the depiction of black people in the news you might think. Except, by riffing upon the dominant colour already present, Himid uses the decisions made by picture editors which translate as a reinforcement of stereotypes. </p>
<h2>Rosalind Nashashibi</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188733/original/file-20171004-6702-1o2bsji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188733/original/file-20171004-6702-1o2bsji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188733/original/file-20171004-6702-1o2bsji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188733/original/file-20171004-6702-1o2bsji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188733/original/file-20171004-6702-1o2bsji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188733/original/file-20171004-6702-1o2bsji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188733/original/file-20171004-6702-1o2bsji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188733/original/file-20171004-6702-1o2bsji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rosalind Nashibishi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate Britain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Working primarily in 16mm film, Rosalind Nashashibi presents two pieces. One portrays a mother and daughter relationship in an overgrown Guatemalan rainforest. It is, however, Nasashibi’s earlier film Electric Gaza, 2014 which captures the texture of life inside the contested territory of the Gaza Strip; a situation about as close as it gets to a ghetto of 21st Century. Shot immediately prior to the 2014 summer offensive by Israeli forces in an act which triggered an appalling loss of civilian life, it is a hauntingly strange and effective film.</p>
<p>To add to the unease, sequences of animation appear to duplicate what would otherwise have been filmed. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188614/original/file-20171003-31723-gbbqqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188614/original/file-20171003-31723-gbbqqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188614/original/file-20171003-31723-gbbqqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188614/original/file-20171003-31723-gbbqqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188614/original/file-20171003-31723-gbbqqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188614/original/file-20171003-31723-gbbqqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188614/original/file-20171003-31723-gbbqqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Confronting: still image from Nashashibi’s installation Electric Gaza.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate Britain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Away from the bustle, Electric Gaza ends in a series of lingering shots – one settles on a strip of green vegetation occupying the middle distance. Except it is possible to notice continuous bands of razor wire disappearing away in what appears to be the “de-militarised” border zone. In the next, we are a taxi passenger reversing from a wall blocking the way out of an urban street. Electric Gaza closes on golden evening light that captures figures swimming at dusk in what looks like paradise, except it clearly isn’t. A way out of this mess appears futile, but life goes on.</p>
<h2>Andrea Büttner</h2>
<p>Andrea Büttner’s presentation at first requires work to make sense. A universal truth is that it’s sometimes hard to see what is hiding in plain sight. Büttner’s false wall floats at the end of one room and appears as though it’s always been there – except it’s made from high-vis fabric used by emergency workers. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188612/original/file-20171003-12163-cxre7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188612/original/file-20171003-12163-cxre7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188612/original/file-20171003-12163-cxre7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188612/original/file-20171003-12163-cxre7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188612/original/file-20171003-12163-cxre7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188612/original/file-20171003-12163-cxre7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188612/original/file-20171003-12163-cxre7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188612/original/file-20171003-12163-cxre7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shortlisted artist Andrea Büttner.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate Britain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a startling depiction of vulnerability, arranged as a sequence of large black-and-white woodcuts, it is Büttner’s repeating Beggars (2016) which catch the eye. The subject is reduced to a motif, arms outstretched, head bowed, and repeated in different versions across an entire wall. Through its graphic simplicity, it is a raw comment on shame and more disturbingly, the loss of identity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188613/original/file-20171003-31723-10qfscj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188613/original/file-20171003-31723-10qfscj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188613/original/file-20171003-31723-10qfscj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188613/original/file-20171003-31723-10qfscj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188613/original/file-20171003-31723-10qfscj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188613/original/file-20171003-31723-10qfscj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188613/original/file-20171003-31723-10qfscj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Challenging: Büttner’s piece, Frieze.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate Britain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Büttner’s low tables act as props for reproductions of other works that each depict the same subject held in the Warburg Institute (her presentation also includes a series of display boards borrowed from the <a href="http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11920499">Simone Weill archive</a>). The past may sometimes have been described as a foreign country, but not for Büttner, it is here and now, the warnings are there to be seen, if we look.</p>
<h2>Hurvin Anderson</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188734/original/file-20171004-6719-1i7uc0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188734/original/file-20171004-6719-1i7uc0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188734/original/file-20171004-6719-1i7uc0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188734/original/file-20171004-6719-1i7uc0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188734/original/file-20171004-6719-1i7uc0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188734/original/file-20171004-6719-1i7uc0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188734/original/file-20171004-6719-1i7uc0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hurvin Anderson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vanley Burke courtesy of Tate Britain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hurvin Anderson’s paintings, when seen together here in a single room, are a rewarding experience. Lying between the abstract and the representational, the works are beguiling. It can take years for a painter’s sensibility to emerge, and decades more for it to come to fruition. There’s a particular energy and confidence to his most recent Ascension series depicting a lone figure climbing a tree. </p>
<p>These are his better works. The figure is at times barely discernible through the blobs and rushes of brush marks that double as foliage. It’s a universal theme Anderson has revisited over the years, and acts as a more lyrical counterbalance to the more formally arranged barber shop paintings of his Peter’s Sitters (2008/9). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188835/original/file-20171004-6697-pj3jm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188835/original/file-20171004-6697-pj3jm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188835/original/file-20171004-6697-pj3jm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188835/original/file-20171004-6697-pj3jm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188835/original/file-20171004-6697-pj3jm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188835/original/file-20171004-6697-pj3jm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188835/original/file-20171004-6697-pj3jm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hurvin Anderson’s barber shop paintings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate Britain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The winner will be announced on December 5. It’s hard to ignore Himid’s wit. But for sheer affirmation, visual clarity and the alchemy required to make sense out of desperate circumstances, it would seem right for Nashashibi’s films to win.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Turner Prize exhibition in the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, is open until January 7.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84811/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Osbaldeston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Turner Prize’s diverse shortlist has made for a coherent and important show.
David Osbaldeston, Reader in Art, Manchester Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83168
2017-08-31T12:13:03Z
2017-08-31T12:13:03Z
The KLF are back – but are they any closer to answering that burning million pound question?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183970/original/file-20170830-7181-1l3rxus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Burning issue.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/conceptual-image-flames-burning-pound-currency-19022353?src=D1lkdzn-R_ncGm187DOXwA-1-73">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For ravers of a certain age, the electronic band known (mostly) as the KLF provided many of the dance floor fillers of the early 1990s. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28w2LVzxVkU">What Time is Love?</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXEOESuiYcA">3am Eternal</a> were part of the euphoria of club culture.</p>
<p>There was also the silliness of their novelty record, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTELokKfCk">Doctorin’ the Tardis</a>. And who could forget the deliberately perverse appearance of country singer Tammy Wynette on the baffling single <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX0mcases4M">Justified and Ancient</a>?</p>
<p>The KLF were known for heavy-handed sampling, and bending every pop rule, until their career went up in flames over two decades ago.</p>
<p>Then, in the summer of 2017, they came back. In an ice cream van. To Liverpool, where an event was held in search of an explanation for KLF’s most notorious and controversial act – the burning of £1m in cash.</p>
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<p>The money burning by the band’s two core members, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, was one of a series of subversive manoeuvres designed to “amend art history”.</p>
<p>The pair had previously fired blanks from a machine gun into a music industry crowd after being named <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtqW7MB5Dmo">best band at the Brit Awards</a> in 1992. Two years later, as the K Foundation, they attempted to undermine the 1994 Turner Prize by awarding double the official prize money to the artist they considered to be the worst on the short list. (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/apr/06/rachel-whiteread-life-in-art">Rachel Whiteread</a> won both “prizes”.) </p>
<p>Then finally, and famously, in August 1994 they took £1m to a remote Scottish island, where, in the middle of the night, they burned the lot.</p>
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<p>Why Did the KLF Burn a Million Quid? was the name of an event that Drummond and Cauty toured around the UK shortly after the embers of their bonfire of vanities had died down. They had no convincing explanation for what they had done, and hoped other people could provide one.</p>
<p>But the tour was a disaster. People were angry. How could they have done something so reckless, so morally indefensible? They eventually resolved not to speak about it, and imposed a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/23/klf-bill-drummond-jimmy-cauty-2023-book">23 year moratorium</a> on the matter.</p>
<p>In August 2017, Why Did the KLF Burn a Million Quid? was also the title of the <a href="http://fabersocial.co.uk/2017/08/15/k-foundation-burn-million-quid/">panel discussion</a> I was invited to join in Liverpool. It was part of three days of mysterious events and performances marking the launch of an experimental <a href="http://fabersocial.co.uk/books/2023-a-trilogy/">new book</a> and a <a href="https://mumufication.com/">new business venture</a> by Drummond and Cauty. </p>
<p>Initially I viewed the invite with some scepticism. I had worked as a music journalist in my twenties and have some familiarity with the industry. But I had no inside knowledge of why the £1m had been destroyed. I also wasn’t sure it was something worth celebrating. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, it had been done, and remained in the public consciousness, so I felt it deserved discussion. Organiser <a href="http://www.tom-james.info/">Tom James</a> thought the research I had published on the mystic campaigning campers of the 1920s, <a href="https://donlonbooks.com/products/the-kindred-of-the-kibbo-kift-intellectual-barbarians-by-annebella-pollen">the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift</a>, might provide some interesting parallels. </p>
<p>On the evening of the debate, 400 KLF fans filled an imposing Victorian Liverpool venue. Taking the form of a public hearing, the panel made their claims about the burning, and witnesses to the original event provided reflections. </p>
<p>Drummond and Cauty did not express opinions. They felt they had nothing more to add. It was up to the audience to vote for the most convincing reason on offer.</p>
<h2>Fishing in the rivers of life</h2>
<p>Turner Prize winner <a href="http://www.jeremydeller.org/">Jeremy Deller</a> began by arguing that the money burning was part of an established nihilistic strand in the art world. He specifically referenced the destructive practices of <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/gustav-metzger-7196">Gustav Metzger</a>, who corroded canvases with acid, and followed this thesis through to <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/pete-townshend-the-rolling-stone-interview-part-one-19680914">Pete Townshend</a> of The Who, whose guitar destruction became an iconic act of rock and roll. </p>
<p>Eminent economist <a href="http://www.debtonation.org/">Ann Pettifor</a> then put forward a radical critique of the finance industry, and emphasised the inherent meaningless of money. She described the burning as “qualitative tightening”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183864/original/file-20170829-6710-635yo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183864/original/file-20170829-6710-635yo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183864/original/file-20170829-6710-635yo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183864/original/file-20170829-6710-635yo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183864/original/file-20170829-6710-635yo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183864/original/file-20170829-6710-635yo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183864/original/file-20170829-6710-635yo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">KLF question.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">@mikefjames</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Journalist Tom Hodgkinson of <a href="https://idler.co.uk/">The Idler</a> magazine suggested that Drummond’s Scottish Presbyterian background meant the accumulation of money was literally against his religion. <a href="https://www.viceland.com/en_us/host/clive-martin">Clive Martin</a> of Vice said the act had pre-empted the laissez-faire attitude of some present day millennial subcultures, for whom petty theft and the waste of vast sums has become a decadent style trend. </p>
<p>My own contribution drew visual and philosophical connections between KLF and the colourful <a href="http://eprints.brighton.ac.uk/15103/1/Kibbo%20Kift%20FINAL.pdf">anti-banking campaigns</a> of an earlier “K culture”. The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift in the 1920s and 1930s employed <a href="http://eprints.brighton.ac.uk/14757/1/Kibbo.pdf">ceremonial magic</a> and ritual burnings and to spread their utopian message of cultural rebirth. </p>
<p>They in turn drew inspiration from the symbolic rites and magical practices of worldwide cultures past and present – from seasonal fire performances to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/potlatch">potlatch ceremonies</a> of destruction. </p>
<p>I described a deep and undying tradition of myth and subversion, of which the KLF are a continuing part. Rather than being a prank or stunt for public notoriety, the burning was a purging of embarrassment about success in the pop industry and the annihilation of the band’s personal history. It drew on a culture that is both justified and ancient. </p>
<p>In the public vote, my proposition won. But the event as a whole was designed to raise more questions than answers. </p>
<p>The title of the three day gathering of audience-generated performance art, political actions, and carnivalesque rituals was <a href="https://www.bidolito.co.uk/jams/">“Welcome to the Dark Ages”</a>, but a repeated subtitle was “What the Fuuk is Going On?” </p>
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<p>There is much joy to be found in chaos, and the end-of-days mood added to the creative risk-taking. Then, as 72 hours of <a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/23076-justified-ancients-of-mu-mu-liverpool-klf-day-three-3-2023">processions, pyres and performances</a> reached their finale, black and white posters began to appear around Liverpool in characteristic KLF font. </p>
<p>Shape shifting and unpredictable, impishly irrational and ultimately unreasonable, it seemed that Drummond and Cauty decided to have the last word – and the last laugh – on the reasons behind the money burning episode after all.</p>
<p>The posters read: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>WHY? BECAUSE WE ARE FUUKING STUPID AND RAN OUT OF IDEAS.
NOW WE NEED THE MONEY BACK.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83168/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annebella Pollen's research into the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift has been previously funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Elephant Trust. The content of this article has not been funded by any external party. </span></em></p>
Was setting fire to all that money immoral waste, ritual sacrifice or artistic statement?
Annebella Pollen, Principal Lecturer in the History of Art and Design, University of Brighton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77188
2017-05-08T12:36:58Z
2017-05-08T12:36:58Z
Turner Prize shortlist finds purpose in uncertain times
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168383/original/file-20170508-20729-oldams.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the artist, Hollybush Gardens and National Museums Liverpool: International Slavery Museum. Photograph by Stuart Whipps</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In these tumultuous times where the rules of order are currently being rewritten, a good question to ask artists might be: where on earth are we up to? More than three decades on from its inception, this year’s Turner Prize is once again asking the same question. It’s just that in divided Brexit Britain, it now comes with a few more added angles.</p>
<p>Where in previous years the messages conveyed by Turner Prize artists may have been lost in a system of oblique signs and irony, present social and political circumstances demand clearer messages. Against a backdrop of social rupture unthinkable just 12 months ago, Tate did a bit of its own rewriting of the rules by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/mar/29/turner-prize-artists-over-50-now-eligible-anish-kapoor">removing the maximum age restriction</a> of 50 – a move which was overdue and has been broadly applauded. Along with the inclusion of a shortlist that draw more heavily on life experiences in their work, it makes way for artists who might now be reaching the top of their game but had previously been ineligible, and also brings a diversity that reflects more broadly the different identities in the UK.</p>
<p>The recent changes provoked an instant response from this year’s selection jury – and the prize is all the better for it, by giving the jury the scope to consider the complexion of the shortlist with a fair degree of added bite. Not because the artists in 2017’s prize could remotely be described as late developers, but because their work finds itself increasingly relevant. This year’s quartet of artists, a number of whom might fall into mid-career status resonates with a sense of renewal and purpose for these uncertain times. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/turner-prize-nominees-lubaina-himid-hurvin-anderson-rosalind-nashashibi-andrea-buttner-a7714951.html">The shortlist</a> comprises three women: Andrea Buttner, Lubaina Himid, and Rosalind Nashashibi, and one man, Hurvin Anderson, all of whom are alumni of British art schools. They are already widely known to audiences across the art world and have established a reputation (over decades in some cases) for filtering their own life experiences from beyond these shores into their work. This is both astute and necessary thinking on the jury’s part.</p>
<p>At the tender age of 40-something, the youngest artist is Rosalind Nashashibi who has been making films into a loose, almost semi-documentary, form for well over a decade. By representing the world as the displaced and unstable entity we imagine it to be, Nashashibi’s work manages to use the camera almost as another consciousness in constant flux. It’s a place where the defining constant appears as geographical difference. </p>
<p>At Bristol’s <a href="http://www.spikeisland.org.uk/about-spike-island/">Spike Island</a> earlier this year, a lot was made of Lubaina Himid’s (62) intensive and visionary installation of painted cutouts, drawings and sculpture. Through a cacophony of intense and vivid colour, Himid’s work seemed to offer an antidote to the mood, and presented a potent reminder of Britain’s colonial past which continues to shape both the present and future.</p>
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</figure>
<p>While Andrea Buttner’s (44) work stretches across a range of media, it has become increasingly known for merging colour with functionality through her enigmatic arrangements of drawing, print and installation. In place of freedom, aspects of Buttner’s work quietly suggest that order and society might instead be something to which we subconsciously submit. </p>
<p>Finally, the established painter Hurvin Anderson (51) has developed a significant body of work by fusing abstraction with representation into a disarmingly effective coexistence. It is a feast of warmth and visual energy that articulates his belief in the discipline of painting to recollect and reaffirm his identity and Afro-Caribbean upbringing.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168359/original/file-20170508-20761-meab4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168359/original/file-20170508-20761-meab4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168359/original/file-20170508-20761-meab4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168359/original/file-20170508-20761-meab4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168359/original/file-20170508-20761-meab4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168359/original/file-20170508-20761-meab4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168359/original/file-20170508-20761-meab4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Untitled (Black Street) by Hurvin Anderson, 2000.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/zric/4864994708/in/photolist-8pUnr7">Huei-Chiang Tsai/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The rule changes aren’t the only added dimension here, but geography also. In a bid to shake things up further, if you want to see the Turner Prize this year, it’s not in London, but Hull – and is one of many highlights in the Northern city’s festivities and status as this year’s UK <a href="https://www.hull2017.co.uk/whatson/">City of Culture</a>. </p>
<p>However, artists need artists – or so the adage goes – and although many find themselves living and working in the capital, a lot either can’t afford it anymore – or choose not to. Interestingly, the shortlist presents a coherent message that artists can work successfully outside London, (and indeed they always have). For a number of years, Nashashibi has lived and worked in Liverpool, while Anderson’s work found its magic by drawing upon his formative years in and around the Afro-Caribbean community in Birmingham. Himid has made the city of Preston, Lancashire, home for the past 30 years or more and remains steadfastly loyal to her adopted town as a place where artists work. Perhaps most unremarkably of all, Andrea Buttner came to study in London from Germany and then promptly chose to stay in the capital.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168320/original/file-20170508-20747-1jhgn3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168320/original/file-20170508-20747-1jhgn3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168320/original/file-20170508-20747-1jhgn3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168320/original/file-20170508-20747-1jhgn3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168320/original/file-20170508-20747-1jhgn3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168320/original/file-20170508-20747-1jhgn3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168320/original/file-20170508-20747-1jhgn3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ferens Art Gallery, Hull: 2017 home of the Turner Prize.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(C) Tate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The shortlist sends the signal that, in every sense, the capital of culture is all around. It’s just a shame that it’s taken a near national nervous breakdown for anyone to notice – and, for artists as interesting as these are, to find their moment. </p>
<p>All of these factors and more, will not be lost on the artists themselves whose work will undergo the usual scrutiny of the national media and public debate.</p>
<p>It is with some justification that artists have become increasingly wary of the media attention and interest level that a nomination to the prize brings. Yet by taking part it still creates a shift in perception which represents the genuine possibility of reaching audiences that other artists can only dream of, and is a gear change for them that otherwise might take years to achieve. More mainstream exposure can, and does, make the difference.</p>
<p>However – while difference and diversity is to be celebrated – if ever they are to be reconciled there are other, much more urgent differences demanding greater vision and imagination through political and social debate. Maybe some of the answers can be found in Hull.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77188/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Osbaldeston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A sense of renewal and purpose in the prize sparked by a lifting of the age limit and looking beyond London.
David Osbaldeston, Reader in Art, Manchester Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70148
2016-12-08T13:40:46Z
2016-12-08T13:40:46Z
The Turner Prize may seem out of date, but it created the UK’s contemporary art scene
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149261/original/image-20161208-31391-1qeze7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Helen Marten © Tate</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The news that Helen Marten won the 2016 Turner Prize this week was met with great and well deserved acclaim. Established by a group called the Patrons of New Art in 1984 and now in its 32nd year, the Turner Prize is exactly one year older than the winning artist herself. </p>
<p>It was set up to encourage and promote a wider interest in contemporary art throughout the UK, which it certainly has achieved, but today commentary is frequently disparaging – it has been called “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/nov/15/turner-prize-age-limit-over-50">boring</a>”, “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3561401/The-Turner-Prize-2008-who-cares-who-wins.html">irrelevant</a>” and “<a href="https://theconversation.com/turner-shortlisted-artist-the-prize-machine-stifles-art-48454">lumbering</a>” in recent years.</p>
<p>As such, it was refreshing this year not only to encounter the breadth and ingenuity of Marten’s work but to hear, in her acceptance speech, of her <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/nov/18/hepworth-sculpture-prize-winner-helen-marten-share-30000-award">distaste for “hierarchical” art prizes</a> and her pledge to share the prize money with her fellow nominees. She revealed a sense of something progressive and pioneering.</p>
<p>I’m a practising artist, who was nominated for the prize in collaboration with my twin sister Jane in 1999. And like Helen Marten, we also had our first solo museum show at The Serpentine Gallery around the same time. We were nominated alongside fellow artists Tracey Emin, Steve McQueen and Steven Pippin. That year, the much acclaimed Oscar-winning director and video artist Steve McQueen won. This was a period in which the Turner attracted much less negativity in the press. So it’s interesting to reflect, 17 years on, on what kind of impact the prize has had on the wider British contemporary art scene.</p>
<h2>Turner copycats</h2>
<p>What is certain is that the prize has been very successful in its mission statement of promoting and widening access to contemporary art. The Turner is still considered by many to be the benchmark of success for artists both nationally and internationally. Its format has been copied, adopted, modified and embraced internationally – from the Vincent Award in Amsterdam and the Hugo Boss Prize in New York to the Duchamp Prize in Paris and the Abraaj Capital Art Prize in the UAE. </p>
<p>The prize continues to thrive and without its impact we might well have been facing an even more serious threat to the vision for the arts in education, which is currently struggling enough – as evidenced in the Department of Education’s adoption of the <a href="http://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/news/arts-teachers-confirm-dire-impact-ebacc-classroom">EBacc system</a>, whereby all creative subjects including GCSE Art are no longer seen as essential to the secondary school curriculum. Without the Turner, I believe there would have been a real possibility of an incurable challenge to the diversity and potential for the creative industries in the UK. </p>
<p>But following the Turner’s example, art prizes have blossomed in the UK in recent years. There’s the <a href="http://www.artesmundi.org/">International Artes Mundi Prize</a> in Cardiff, the <a href="http://www.hepworthwakefield.org/news/the-hepworth-wakefield-announces-the-four-shortlisted-artists-and-judging-panel-for-the-uk-s-first-prize-for-sculpture/">Hepworth Prize for Sculpture</a> in Wakefield, <a href="http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/johnmoores/">John Moores Painting Prize</a> in Liverpool and – open to all UK undergraduates – the <a href="http://www.balticmill.com/about/baltic-news/woon-foundation-prize-2016-call-for-entries">Woon Foundation Prize</a> in Newcastle.</p>
<h2>New awards</h2>
<p>Art prizes are everywhere, it would seem, but there are some that are now starting to shift away from the familiar hierarchical format of the Turner Prize in pioneering and timely new ways. </p>
<p>In March this year, The Freelands Foundation <a href="https://www.a-n.co.uk/news/new-100000-award-launched-for-women-artists">announced a new award worth £100,000</a> for women artists, who are still dismally underrepresented within the art world. The award is the first of its kind to challenge this hierarchy by supporting a regional arts organisation to present an exhibition alongside realising a significant new work by a mid-career female artist living and working in the UK.</p>
<p>And last month, BALTIC Centre of Contemporary Art, Gateshead – the first venue outside of London to host the Turner Prize in 2012 – launched its own <a href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/baltic-new-emerging-artists-award-744944#.WCnvrc_3HwA.email">New Artists Award</a> to be given to four emerging artists. This will be the first UK award ever to be selected solely by artists. Each recipient will receive the same amount as the Turner Prize winner – £25,000 – to create a new work that will be exhibited at BALTIC for 13 weeks, along with a £5,000 fee.</p>
<p>The legacy of The Turner prize is to continually recalibrate, revise and transform conceptions of contemporary art. The UK art world has changed immeasurably since 1984 and it is now a global enterprise. Yet it is a powerful testament to the strength and resilience of the creative industries in the regions that we have as many contemporary art galleries, art museums, artist-led organisations and arts-based education and research projects in colleges and universities. </p>
<p>And this message is only getting stronger. At the opening of the new Tate Modern earlier this year, the introduction of the new <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/tate-exchange?gclid=CJrslMS35NACFW217QodI00NDw">Tate Exchange</a> initiative was announced, placing art education and access for all at the heart of the UK’s foremost public contemporary art museum – and creator of the Turner Prize.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70148/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Wilson is currently BALTIC artist trustee.
</span></em></p>
Helen Marten, this year’s winner, has revealed a sense of something progressive and pioneering.
Louise Wilson, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Northumbria University, Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/52035
2015-12-09T16:00:00Z
2015-12-09T16:00:00Z
Turner Prize win must not restrict Assemble’s work to the zone of ‘art’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105041/original/image-20151209-15564-6t1shv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C653%2C1746%2C1478&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Assemble</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To help me take stock of Assemble’s Turner Prize win I revisited a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03dsk4d">lecture</a> by 2003 Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry, delivered in Liverpool in 2013. In it, Grayson offers guidance for discerning the boundaries of contemporary art. These include: Is it in a gallery? Is it made by an artist? And the “themepark + suduko” test; does it shock and make us think?</p>
<p>These boundaries have been getting less and less obvious over recent decades, but it will still have surprised many that a group of young architects won the UK’s most prestigious prize in contemporary art – for a project refurbishing houses in Liverpool.</p>
<p>Assemble are a creative collective and the judges saw their work as sitting in a long tradition of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/dec/07/urban-assemble-win-turner-prize-toxteth">collective art practice</a>. I’m not sure Grayson’s markers of contemporary art are satisfied here, but he offers reassurance that art is a “baggy idea”. </p>
<p>In the series of projects in <a href="http://www.granby4streetsclt.co.uk/blog/">Granby</a>, South Liverpool, that attracted the attention of the Turner Prize, Assemble worked with local people to redevelop the area in a way that was meaningful to them, using its existing buildings. Their client is Granby 4 Streets Community Land Trust. </p>
<p>Assemble became a major player in a successful urban regeneration project, in an area that had been left to decay for a generation. Initiatives which might have seen these streets re-invigorated or replaced had been tabled before but none came to fruition. So this is a very significant project worthy of recognition by a major national award, although an art prize may seem surprising. </p>
<h2>Creative communities</h2>
<p>But work in this field definitely can be art. Alongside the success of Granby, Liverpool is significant for having other successful <a href="http://www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk/what-is-a-clt">Community Land Trusts</a> (CLT). These organisations are run by ordinary people to develop and manage assets important to their community. <a href="http://www.jeanneworks.net/projects/2up2down___homebaked/">2Up2Down</a>, for example, was a project consciously defined as art and part of the Liverpool Biennale. Artist Jeanne van Heeswijk worked with local people in Anfield to re-imagine their area. Over several years this project grew into a thriving co-operative bakery, <a href="http://homebaked.org.uk/">HomeBaked</a> and a CLT which is now developing affordable housing.</p>
<p>At a CLT network event in 2014, people from around the country talked about the importance of community-based work in moving from “protest to action”. In Granby, the <a href="http://www.granby4streetsclt.co.uk/history-of-the-four-streets/">initial “action” by local residents</a> was guerrilla gardening and painting abandoned houses. Later, a market was set up and a CLT was established. Eventually, working with social investor Steinbeck Studio, the CLT commissioned Assemble for their collaborative approach, to develop and communicate a homegrown vision for the area; together. </p>
<p>Now, the first houses are ready to be homes again and Assemble are still working in the area and collaborating with the people there. Whether or not you see it as art, it is refreshing. Participatory design is not always respected within architecture. But the Assemble approach doesn’t neglect architectural quality. The collective prioritises a real sensitivity that enables excellent design and aspiration while remaining open to collaboration with the communities in question. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105088/original/image-20151209-15552-15mc633.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105088/original/image-20151209-15552-15mc633.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105088/original/image-20151209-15552-15mc633.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105088/original/image-20151209-15552-15mc633.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105088/original/image-20151209-15552-15mc633.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105088/original/image-20151209-15552-15mc633.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105088/original/image-20151209-15552-15mc633.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Showroom for Granby Workshop (2015).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Tramway</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition to their built work, Assemble have established a social enterprise called <a href="http://www.granbyworkshop.co.uk/">Granby Workshop</a>. The workshop uses demolition material to create hand crafted items and profits support an initiative engaging local young people in creative and practical projects. So, using their skills as designers and makers they address issues not always considered to be in the realm of architecture.</p>
<p>Whilst Assemble initially seemed <a href="http://bcove.me/u3gifjfq">slightly uncomfortable</a> by the Turner nomination, their nature as an art and design collective suggests they were never bothered by the boundaries between art and architecture. They might fit into the breed of new architects that Rory Hyde <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j4KSFkVG3KQC&redir_esc=y">describes</a> as “operating beyond their ability as design professionals … forging a new era of civic responsibility and ethical entrepreneurialism”. </p>
<p>Such an approach requires architects to be excellent designers of course but also good communicators, and listeners. There has to be a sensitivity to the different needs and aspirations of different places and the creativity and confidence to try new things. This is a very artistic kind of sensibility.</p>
<h2>Collaboration</h2>
<p>Within my third-year undergraduate design studio, we’re exploring collaborative working, and other studios place emphasis on making, using traditional or new technologies. And practising what we preach, Head of Liverpool School of Architecture Andrew Crompton and I contribute to the advisory board relating to Ducie Street, the last remaining row of derelict terraces in Granby. It’s exciting to be involved in a new era, working with Steinbeck Studio and Assemble, on a different approach to development. Liverpool is proving to be a test bed for such projects.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105084/original/image-20151209-15552-11ru7a3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105084/original/image-20151209-15552-11ru7a3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105084/original/image-20151209-15552-11ru7a3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105084/original/image-20151209-15552-11ru7a3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105084/original/image-20151209-15552-11ru7a3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105084/original/image-20151209-15552-11ru7a3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105084/original/image-20151209-15552-11ru7a3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Derelict Ducie Street.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Emma Curtin</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pleased as I am that the spotlight is now on Assemble and their place and people sensitive approach, there is still a niggling concern at the blurring of boundaries. I can’t help thinking that perhaps the “art” label designates Assemble and the Granby project as an outsider, unique, not something that can be replicated.</p>
<p>Grayson recounts how he felt when someone questioned his insistence that his TV programmes were not art but TV: “I wanted to hit her over the head with my BAFTA.” Assemble’s work in Granby may be art practice but it is also a successful approach to the provision of affordable housing and urban regeneration in an area where many projects have failed. So it is not only successful as art but measured on its own terms as architecture and urban regeneration. The Turner Prize must not allow an excuse to ignore this success.</p>
<p>Assemble <a href="http://assemblestudio.co.uk/?page_id=48">describe themselves</a> as “seeking to address the typical disconnection between the public and the process by which places are made”. This is a critical point which strikes at the heart of discontent about our urban environments and it is a goal that must be allowed to have influence beyond the art world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52035/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Curtin works for Liverpool University and consults on the Ducie Street Project for Steinbeck Studio.
Emma is chair of Friends of London Road Fire Station and she is affiliated with the Labour Party.
Projects with Friends of London Road Fire Station have received funding from The Community Assets in Difficult Ownership Programme. </span></em></p>
Perhaps the “art” label designates Assemble and the Granby project as outsiders, unique, creating something that can’t be replicated.
Emma Curtin, Architect and University Teacher, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/48454
2015-10-02T15:12:26Z
2015-10-02T15:12:26Z
Turner shortlisted artist: the prize machine stifles art
<p>The latest exhibition for the biggest award in contemporary British art, the Turner Prize, is now open at Glasgow’s Tramway. It comes as no surprise that responses to the show of the four shortlisted artists have so far <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/30/turner-prize-2015-review-conspiracy-theory-coats">been lukewarm</a>. </p>
<p>As a shortlisted artist participating at the Tate in 1997, the compromises required to make everything “fit” the lumbering Turner Prize machine overwhelmed both the work and possibilities for its interpretation. This year that homogenisation extends to turning Tramway, one of the UK’s most distinctive and cavernous exhibition spaces, into a claustrophobic warren of corridors and white cubes.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96953/original/image-20151001-29653-w2qx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96953/original/image-20151001-29653-w2qx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96953/original/image-20151001-29653-w2qx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96953/original/image-20151001-29653-w2qx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96953/original/image-20151001-29653-w2qx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96953/original/image-20151001-29653-w2qx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96953/original/image-20151001-29653-w2qx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Assemble group photo, 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Assemble</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tramway director, Sarah Munro, <a href="http://www.theskinny.co.uk/art/news/glasgow-turner-prize">has said</a>: “In truth the Turner Prize and those artists associated with it don’t really tell the full story … the context is much more layered.” This hints at the complex power dynamics which dominate the prize. The ethos of the Turner is the antithesis of the artist-led communities and workspaces in which many of the nominated artists were nurtured. Having directed what began life as an artist’s collective, The Collective Gallery in Edinburgh, for many years, Munro is acutely aware of this.</p>
<p>Over the last 15 years, galleries, museums and the Turner Prize itself have struggled to present a more socially engaged practice <a href="http://field-journal.com/issue-1/kester">that crosses</a> “boundaries between art, activism, urbanism, anthropology and many other fields”. Most often this “complex, contradictory and unruly area of practice” loses its vitality in the process.</p>
<p>But this year, <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tramway/exhibition/turner-prize-2015/turner-prize-2015-artists-assemble">Assemble</a>, an architecture collective, nominated for their work on a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/may/12/assemble-turner-prize-2015-wildcard-how-the-young-architecture-crew-assemble-rocked-the-art-world">Liverpool housing project</a>, do manage to look distinctive. They have translated their work into an “exhibit” by building the self-contained, enclosed <a href="http://thespaces.com/2015/10/01/assemble-builds-a-workshop-inside-the-tramway-for-the-turner-prize-show/">Granby Workshop Showroom</a>, with products and samples made by residents in their Liverpool projects, and available to purchase soon.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97048/original/image-20151002-23058-106vmvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97048/original/image-20151002-23058-106vmvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97048/original/image-20151002-23058-106vmvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97048/original/image-20151002-23058-106vmvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97048/original/image-20151002-23058-106vmvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97048/original/image-20151002-23058-106vmvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97048/original/image-20151002-23058-106vmvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Assemble, A Showroom for Granby Workshop (2015).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Hunter, Tramway.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Tate on tour</h2>
<p>Locating the Turner show in Glasgow is also part of this push to extend boundaries and venture beyond the ivory towers of Bankside’s Tate Britain. This year’s show is the fourth of its now biennial manifestations outside of London, having already decamped around the country to venues in Liverpool, Newcastle, and Derry. </p>
<p>Penelope Curtis, Tate Britain’s director, says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Given how many artists from Glasgow have made up the Turner Prize shortlists over recent years, it is great to have the prize on show in Tramway, which feels like a natural home for the prize this year.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Home” is an emotive idea. In the run up to the exhibition, home and identity have dominated discussions for all the wrong reasons. For the first time since 2004, none of the four shortlisted Turner Prize artists are Scottish, or based in Scotland. Outraged <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13213474.Revealed__no_Scots_in_Turner_Prize_2015_short_list_in_year_it_will_be_staged_in_Glasgow/">local press</a> speculate about their deliberate exclusion by the prize’s selection committee, while Guardian critic, Jonathan Jones <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/aug/18/the-turner-prize-bus-tours-tartan-fetishism-petty-scotland-britain">was outraged</a> that an accompanying <a href="http://www.travellinggallery.com/">touring exhibition</a> of previous Scottish Turner Prize winners and nominees “reeks of Tartan fetishism”.</p>
<p>But the fuss around (the exclusion of) the home team overshadows the fact that, for the first time in years, all of the artists actually have London as their chosen base.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97051/original/image-20151002-13364-1l4gjm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97051/original/image-20151002-13364-1l4gjm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97051/original/image-20151002-13364-1l4gjm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97051/original/image-20151002-13364-1l4gjm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97051/original/image-20151002-13364-1l4gjm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97051/original/image-20151002-13364-1l4gjm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97051/original/image-20151002-13364-1l4gjm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not breaking out with much success.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">chrisdorney/ shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The continued draw of the capital is at odds with a general perception that artists are fleeing to northern parts because of the pace of gentrification. Artists occupy a new area; are inevitably evicted as it becomes more desirable; the space is then co-opted by investors. This is not to say that cities outside London feel any benefit from this: although the gentrification of London may continuously uproot artists from their communities, the city is overwhelmingly good for the art market and, in turn, for institutions like the Tate. Despite rocketing prices, London retains its artistic allure.</p>
<p>This is in stark contrast to Derry, the venue for the 2013 Turner Prize, where the planned “cultural hub” around the gallery which hosted the exhibition is now an office complex. The same cycle can be seen repeated in the other Turner Prize host cities outside of London.</p>
<p>At a recent symposium in Newcastle’s <a href="http://thenewbridgeproject.com/">NewBridge Project</a>, the 200 or so tenants of this artist-led community of studios and exhibition spaces at risk of losing their city centre premises to redevelopment, were asked whether it was time for artists to “grow up” and accept the new agenda of cuts, philanthropy and big business sponsorship. <a href="https://www.a-n.co.uk/news/time-to-grow-up-id-rather-stand-up-and-be-counted">Their answer</a> resonates for any artist trying to find a way to work and survive while negotiating situations which are out with their control: “No, we don’t need to grow up – not if growing up means compromising our values or forgetting why we became artists in the first place.”</p>
<h2>Environmental art</h2>
<p>For me, returning back to working as an artist in Glasgow after the Turner Prize meant the simple pleasures of home and a clear artistic identity, built on a slow and steadily developed practice; creating my own, unmediated relationship with the “public” who were at the centre of my research and practice. This way of working was fostered by the core curriculum of the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/oct/17/glasgow-turner-prize">environmental art</a> department at Glasgow School of Art, where I studied. Regular public art projects forced students out of their studios to consider how to make work in public space, temporarily exhibiting the results in that context.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97047/original/image-20151002-23065-m3w3xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97047/original/image-20151002-23065-m3w3xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97047/original/image-20151002-23065-m3w3xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97047/original/image-20151002-23065-m3w3xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97047/original/image-20151002-23065-m3w3xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97047/original/image-20151002-23065-m3w3xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97047/original/image-20151002-23065-m3w3xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From Turner Prize Exhibition, 1997, Detail ‘After A True Story, Giant & Fairy Tales’ Christine Borland, Glasgow Life, Glasgow Museums.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Christine Borland. Photography by Alan McAteer</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While Tate branding will always reinforce the association with the capital, a lasting legacy of the Turner’s residency in Glasgow would be for the prize, to become truly itinerant, allowing artists and their works to move out of the bricks and mortar of the white gallery space all together.</p>
<p>This direct response to artist’s working methods would allow freedom for both them and audiences from the hierarchies which currently permeate and dominate too many of the debates around the Turner. Experience of the Turner Prize would be based on public participation, not a second-hand media storm in a teacup or <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tramway/exhibition/turner-prize-2015">reliance on</a> the accompanying “programme of workshops, talks, tours and activities for people of all ages to get involved and be inspired by the creative work on show”. </p>
<p>Nicholas Serota, director of Tate, <a href="https://www.a-n.co.uk/news/expanded-tate-modern-to-open-june-2016">tells us</a> that the Tate Modern extension will be “a communal place where people can meet to share, debate and create”. It is time the same aspiration was extended to enable the Turner Prize to really come “home” and find a place where the power of the art, not the structures of power, is centre stage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48454/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christine Borland's work is included in the Travelling Gallery exhibition, 'Eyes on the Prize' which is mentioned in this article.</span></em></p>
Shortlisted for the Turner in 1997, Christine Borland discusses the suffocating nature of the prize and its shortsighted attempts to branch out.
Christine Borland, Professor of Art, Northumbria University, Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/34902
2014-12-02T12:07:06Z
2014-12-02T12:07:06Z
Turner Prize has become middle aged – but that’s no bad thing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66055/original/image-20141202-20560-5ljva2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Duncan Campbell, It for Others 2013.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Duncan Campbell and Rodeo Gallery.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Duncan Campbell has won the 2014 Turner Prize. This is a well-deserved accolade for an extraordinary work (although I preferred Tris Vonna-Mitchell for many reasons, maybe a yearning for that clunking and whirring of the old slide projector). But what I’ve found most notable about this year’s prize are the complaints – that the winning work is “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/01/turner-prize-2014-winner-duncan-campbell-more-lecture-than-artwork">more like a lecture than an artwork</a>”, or that the prize has “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/turner-prize/11266807/Turner-Prize-2014-What-is-the-point-of-the-Turner-Prize.html">lost its edge</a>”. These are easy shots to take, and they ignore a far more interesting question – whether the maturing of the prize is actually a very good thing. </p>
<p>I am an art historian who likes looking back to the 20th century. I also like my art to be big, bold, at least 60 years old, flat, painterly and preferably abstract. The artists I write about are usually dead, or at least too old to care anymore about what other people say. </p>
<p>I also like philosophy. I like to think about what art carries around with it conceptually, how it develops, what we expect from it, what makes it live or die. </p>
<p>In other words, I’m not afraid of taking time to think about things, particularly art. </p>
<p>I’m not particularly tuned into or turned on by contemporary art, but I know a great deal about its ancestry. When I say “ancestry” I don’t just mean all those artworks of old, but the ideas, debates and exhibitions that have carried them through; from before their conception, when the paint hit the canvas, until the present day, when they become heavy, old and encumbered with words. So you would probably assume that something as newfangled as the Turner Prize wouldn’t excite someone like me, but it does. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66060/original/image-20141202-20560-1yqhynf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66060/original/image-20141202-20560-1yqhynf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66060/original/image-20141202-20560-1yqhynf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66060/original/image-20141202-20560-1yqhynf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66060/original/image-20141202-20560-1yqhynf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66060/original/image-20141202-20560-1yqhynf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66060/original/image-20141202-20560-1yqhynf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Duncan Campbell, It for Others 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Duncan Campbell and Rodeo Gallery.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>No fun</h2>
<p>And so some <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/30279976">comments made by Will Gompertz</a>, The BBC’s arts editor, made me more than a little cross. He accused this year’s nominated work of not being “fun” or “challenging”; not like it was in the days when the Young British Artists were all the rage. He went on to say that this year’s crop is much more introspective and cerebral. He thought that the artists seem to be concentrating on art history rather than commenting on the challenges of the contemporary art, of which they are a part. </p>
<p>But art history and contemporary art are not mutually exclusive. The art presented in this Turner Prize thinks, it cogitates, it looks to its past. It has grown up, matured, reached middle age. It explicitly and knowingly claims from its ancestry, from film, advertising, printing, textiles, photography and performance. These artists use concepts, materials, processes and ideas from the broader reaches of art history; from the agitators of Futurism, the questioning language and performances of Dada, to the collages of Schwitters, the collaborative ventures of Warhol’s Factory and the assemblages of Rauschenberg. </p>
<p>This stuff isn’t “new” in its purest sense, but no art is, or ever has been. These artists garner resources from the past and then work these into their new social and cultural environments. In doing so, they question art, its moral imperatives, its political function, as well as how it can engage a widening public. </p>
<p>It may not shock in the same way as say Hirst or Emin did in the 1990s, but then focusing on this pays a great disservice to their work too – their art was, and is, far more complex and “cerebral” than many critics would care or want to admit. </p>
<p>What I love about this year’s nominated work is that it has been carefully considered and it asks you to take time to think. There may not be many bells and whistles, these artists are not necessarily poking their tongue out at the establishment, but instead are quietly and gently questioning it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66057/original/image-20141202-20576-11j73sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66057/original/image-20141202-20576-11j73sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66057/original/image-20141202-20576-11j73sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66057/original/image-20141202-20576-11j73sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66057/original/image-20141202-20576-11j73sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66057/original/image-20141202-20576-11j73sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66057/original/image-20141202-20576-11j73sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Turner Prize installation shot - Duncan Campbell, It for Others 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Copyright the artist, courtesy Tate Photography</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>It for Others</h2>
<p>Which brings me on to my admiration for Campbell’s winning work, a 54-minute film called It for Others. It’s a medley of many things, part lecture, part dance, part window into a museum of objects, a response to Chris Marker and Alain Resnais’ 1953 film Statues Also Die, framed within a new context. </p>
<p>This framing eloquently questions the ways in which we first acquired and now display art of the “primitive”. Campbell riffles through the archives of art histories and so brings back to light the very questions the art of the past was itself trying to articulate. He collages these questions with images of conspicuous consumption, photographs, film stills; the overlapping histories of objects and their visual cultures in a way that still inform our own. </p>
<p>In a world that is increasingly complex, as our experiences becomes frighteningly mediated by a rapid succession of images, Campbell’s work is important. His intelligence and careful working through of a whole range of important questions and ideas may seem “timid” or “introspective” to some, but in a world where shock values are becoming extreme, where knowledge is becoming fast and furious, particularly via the media, I think a slower, “middle-aged” and crafted response is not necessarily a bad thing. </p>
<p>All the nominated work has a strong visual impact, this is because not only are they beautifully crafted, as all art of worth should be, it is also intelligent; it is cerebral and should be celebrated for that, not dismissed as “safe”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanne Crawford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Duncan Campbell has won the 2014 Turner Prize. This is a well-deserved accolade for an extraordinary work (although I preferred Tris Vonna-Mitchell for many reasons, maybe a yearning for that clunking…
Joanne Crawford, Lecturer in History of Art, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/32299
2014-09-30T05:27:44Z
2014-09-30T05:27:44Z
Turner Prize show fails to live up to potential of shortlist
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60334/original/qgps3q86-1412007278.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ciara Phillips, Things Shared, 2014.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate Photography</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this year, Turner Prize nominee Duncan Campbell said that in making films he attempts to find what the writer Samuel Beckett termed “a form that accommodates the mess”. It is exactly this search that characterises the 2014 Turner Prize exhibition. </p>
<p>Both Campbell himself and James Richards succeed with their films. Both artists are adept in splicing appropriated footage with their own in order to raise very specific questions for the viewer about authorial perspectives and the politicisation of the writing of history. But for the other two – <a href="http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/tris_vonna_michell/">Tris Vonna-Michell</a> and to a lesser extent <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/turner-prize-2014/turner-prize-2014-artists-ciara-phillips">Ciara Phillips</a> – the format and requirements of exhibition formality have sadly compromised the work itself. And to such an extent that the content seems to be missing. </p>
<p>The Turner Prize exhibition was always going to present a challenge for these two. This is because they’re not in the business of making artefacts that are typically housed in a gallery such as Tate Britain. But this was exactly why I was excited to see them in the shortlist. I knew the format required by the gallery space itself would present a real challenge and, more excitingly, the fact they were shortlisted was an opportunity to potentially bend the typical rules of static Turner Prize exhibitions. Finally, the Tate was endorsing a wider variety of contemporary art.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60345/original/7b8w2tqz-1412008649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60345/original/7b8w2tqz-1412008649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60345/original/7b8w2tqz-1412008649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60345/original/7b8w2tqz-1412008649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60345/original/7b8w2tqz-1412008649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60345/original/7b8w2tqz-1412008649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60345/original/7b8w2tqz-1412008649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Duncan Campbell, It for Others, 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Duncan Campbell and Rodeo Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Bottled it</h2>
<p>No such luck. Both Phillips’ and Vonna-Michell’s subject matter relies heavily on engagement with their audience. And so both faced a choice of how to present it within the framework of a conventional art space. Sadly, both shirked the complexities involved in doing so, instead opting to exhibit documentation of the work and to display props from the event.</p>
<p>Because of this, their work presents in a very distorted way. Take Vonna-Michell, for example, whose work typically involves a live medley of improvised rhythmic story-telling. As a viewer, you are compelled to listen. The stories are mainly about himself, about his search for his own history in relation to his German/Canadian roots. He goes to Leipzig, he goes to Japan. As a viewer, the only reason you’re still listening is because he’s there in front of you. He’s pleading with you in the moment to listen to him and presents you with images to “evidence” the idiosyncratic detail in what he is saying. And there is something potent within that – something urgent – which speaks volumes about a basic connection between people and their verbalised histories. </p>
<p>But in this exhibition, Vonna-Michell has presented a film of his performance, Finding Chopin: Dans L'Essex, along with two displays of photographs on light-boxes. This seems to me to be for no other reason than to avoid the logistics of live-ness that so distinctly characterises his work. The use of film as a medium feels unconvincing, particularly within the company of Richards and Jamie Campbell, whose own video work functions precisely to unravel and deconstruct the framework of the medium itself. Next to them, Vonna-Michell’s film comes across as sincere at best and naive at worst.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60335/original/ktyf6chg-1412007334.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60335/original/ktyf6chg-1412007334.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60335/original/ktyf6chg-1412007334.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60335/original/ktyf6chg-1412007334.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60335/original/ktyf6chg-1412007334.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60335/original/ktyf6chg-1412007334.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60335/original/ktyf6chg-1412007334.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tris Vonna-Michell, Addendum I (Finding Chopin: Dans l'Essex), 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate Photography</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Things Shared, Ciara Phillips presents us with a monumental screen-print installation. Again, I’m left scratching my head given what I know about her work. Print-making is always a starting point for Phillips, a means to bring together different communities and discourses that address broader issues of labour, solidarity, democracy and capital. The most interesting aspect of the work isn’t the actual prints, but rather what print-making enables her to bring about. However, her Turner exhibit strangely distorts these concerns by instead monumentalising the final prints in an overhung visual display. It all seems quite arbitrary, strange to see the work presented in this way; over amplified for the sake of filling a room. As with Vonna-Michell, she’s tried to circumvent the mess that the event itself would demand. But it seems to have taken with it the content.</p>
<h2>The work itself</h2>
<p>Not so with James Richards’ work. His archives of images are collated to produce video collages that draw together disparate elements into an experiential – and very tactile – whole. Rosebud takes censored photographs from art books in a Tokyo library – including photographs from Robert Mapplethorpe and Man Ray that have the genitalia scratched out – and intersperses them with his own footage and peripheral sensory sounds. Closely framed shots of flowers over a twitching anus (rosebud?) give way to a budgie being fondled, then on to footage of roadside shrubbery at night. An amplified sensual soundtrack provokes a strange visceral response to the image. Despite its graphic content, Rosebud maintains a subtle openness with the viewer. We’re left to make connections for ourselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60337/original/rxt8xjpn-1412007428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60337/original/rxt8xjpn-1412007428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60337/original/rxt8xjpn-1412007428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60337/original/rxt8xjpn-1412007428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60337/original/rxt8xjpn-1412007428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60337/original/rxt8xjpn-1412007428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60337/original/rxt8xjpn-1412007428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Richards, The Screens, 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate Photography</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Duncan Campbell’s 54-minute film, It for Others 2013, closes the exhibition. It’s an intelligent study in four chapters that takes under its lens how objects become commoditised. Inspired by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais’s <a href="http://africasacountry.com/from-the-archives-alain-resnaiss-film-on-african-art-statues-also-die-1953/">Statues Also Die</a>, 1953, the film addresses the fetishisation of African art and the impact of colonialism on African heritage. </p>
<p>In a collaboration with a dance company, we watch dancers attempting to illustrate Karl Marx’s Capital Volume 1. The narrator anxiously questions the use of a black dancer within it. Although the film was made last year, it seems particularly poignant given <a href="https://theconversation.com/shutdown-of-exhibit-b-has-thrust-anxieties-about-racism-to-the-fore-the-debate-must-go-on-32250">the recent closure of Brett Bailey’s Exhibit B</a> at the Barbican. The duration of the work may put some viewers off, but the wait is rewarded.</p>
<p>I was excited by this year’s shortlist. It was varied, original. Finally, I thought, we’re going to see some mess in the Tate. I understand the format of this exhibition, that it is based on the previous exhibition through which the artist was nominated. These are four very relevant young artists, who (for once) are interested in issues bigger than themselves. But this key interest is only communicated in half of the exhibits. It would seem that formality got the best of some.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32299/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lois Rowe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Earlier this year, Turner Prize nominee Duncan Campbell said that in making films he attempts to find what the writer Samuel Beckett termed “a form that accommodates the mess”. It is exactly this search…
Lois Rowe, Course Leader and Fine Art Programme Director, University of the Arts London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/26414
2014-05-07T16:33:24Z
2014-05-07T16:33:24Z
The 2014 Turner Prize shortlist is all about the viewer
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47979/original/dssm65vr-1399472272.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ciara Phillips, Workshop (2010–ongoing), 2013, The Showroom, London. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the artist and The Showroom, London. © Ciara Phillips.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1973, Marcel Duchamp said: “Art is not about itself, but the attention we bring to it.” This is something that this year’s Turner Prize shortlist brings to the fore. The shortlisted artists all have one thing in common – the viewer is central to the existence of the work. </p>
<p>The shortlist comprises Duncan Campbell, Ciara Phillips, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell. None of these artists is likely to be familiar to anyone outside the art world, which suggests that an emphasis has been placed on bringing artists who are not yet mainstream to greater public awareness. </p>
<p>Penelope Curtis, Director of the Tate Britain and chair of the judging panel, stressed this, and discussed how the artists highlight the “mobility of the contemporary art world”. She said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The four shortlisted artists share a strong international presence and an ability to adapt, restage and reinterpret their own and others’ works, very often working in a collaborative social context.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47983/original/gjdtwnxx-1399473128.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47983/original/gjdtwnxx-1399473128.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47983/original/gjdtwnxx-1399473128.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47983/original/gjdtwnxx-1399473128.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47983/original/gjdtwnxx-1399473128.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47983/original/gjdtwnxx-1399473128.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47983/original/gjdtwnxx-1399473128.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Duncan Campbell, It for Others, 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Duncan Campbell and Rodeo Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We see this approach to reinterpretation particularly in the artists’ common use of collage. The works all “appropriate” by feeding off pre-existing works and their reference to others. Different forms of media are spliced and combined to comment and bounce off each other – archival footage and new material including a new dance work in the case of <a href="http://venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org/media/video/item/duncan-campbell-interview-venice-2013">Duncan Campbell</a>, censored artworks by Man Ray or Robert Mapplethorpe and new footage of nature in the case of James Richards. </p>
<p>In a formal sense collage can also elicit audience participation. It requires the viewer to come to some kind of perception or assertion as to just how or why the different fragments and mediums connect and respond to one another each time they view it. And the social or political element is often implicit in this too – whether this be the exploration of censored images in James Richards’s film, or the social function of Ciara Phillips’s workshops. </p>
<p>With Tris Vonna-Mitchell, shortlisted for his exhibition <a href="http://www.focalpoint.org.uk/archive/exhibitions/14/">Postscript II (Berlin)</a>, live spoken word and a “visual script” of projections and photocopies combine. He often engages directly with his audience, asking them to contribute to the direction of his performance. Using an egg-timer and a series of photographs, a table, or the floor, Vonna-Michell foregrounds that it is in fact you, as viewers that create the work. Interested in, as he puts it, the “flexibility of meaning that exists between the image and the spoken word”, Vonna-Michell’s work is never the same twice. His performances depend on their audience, the collage that he creates includes his viewers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47981/original/hchf6zw6-1399472599.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47981/original/hchf6zw6-1399472599.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47981/original/hchf6zw6-1399472599.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47981/original/hchf6zw6-1399472599.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47981/original/hchf6zw6-1399472599.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47981/original/hchf6zw6-1399472599.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47981/original/hchf6zw6-1399472599.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tris Vonna-Michell, OU: Finding Chopin 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the Artist, Cabinet, London and Jan Mott, Brussels</span></span>
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<p><a href="http://www.theshowroom.org/programme.html?id=1559">Ciara Phillips’ work</a> is a similarly flexible work in progress. She works with print in the broadest sense, producing and using textiles, screenprints, photographs and wall paintings. Her solo exhibition at The Showroom in London involved transforming the gallery into a temporary print studio where artists, designers and local women’s groups were invited in to produce new work: the exhibition, she argues, is as much about education as creation. </p>
<p>Many of the screenprints are made on newsprint and cotton, combining the new and the old. The exhibition explored the notion of art-making as a collaborative process and print-making itself as a democratic experience, which can have a broader socio-political impact. In this sense the work represents a move away from the artwork as a single, monumental piece into an area in which production, collaboration and creativity are prioritised.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47982/original/8rb9rbzx-1399472709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47982/original/8rb9rbzx-1399472709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47982/original/8rb9rbzx-1399472709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47982/original/8rb9rbzx-1399472709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47982/original/8rb9rbzx-1399472709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47982/original/8rb9rbzx-1399472709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47982/original/8rb9rbzx-1399472709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">James Richards, Rosebud, 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the Artist, Cabinet, London and Rodeo, Istanbul</span></span>
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<p>Another common thread that runs through this year’s shortlist is an engagement with participation and, by association, the socio-political. This is not always explicit, but there are political concerns beneath the surface of all these “collages”. Curtis described the work of this year’s artists as “serious works”, contributing to a shortlist that is “perhaps less fun” than previous years, but perhaps symptomatic of our art-historic moment and the politics that surround it. </p>
<p>To return to Duchamp. One of his most significant contributions to modern thought was the proposition that it is the viewer who creates the work of art, rather than the artist. This year’s line up of artists likewise invite the viewer to create the work to a greater or lesser extent. It seems like a welcome move for the Turner Prize shortlist to be embracing the values of wider participation at last. The Turner Prize 2014 will open to the public on September 30.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26414/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lois Rowe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In 1973, Marcel Duchamp said: “Art is not about itself, but the attention we bring to it.” This is something that this year’s Turner Prize shortlist brings to the fore. The shortlisted artists all have…
Lois Rowe, Course Leader and Fine Art Programme Director, University of the Arts London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.