The shortlist for 2024’s Turner Prize has been announced and includes Scottish artist Jasleen Kaur who covered a red sports car with an ornamental doily mat.
Manilla-born Pio Abad, Manchester-born Claudette Johnson, Glasgow-born Kaur and Worthing-born Delaine Le Bas have been nominated in the prize’s 40th anniversary as the prestigious art event returns to London’s Tate Britain for the first time in six years.
The artists are competing for £25,000, while those shortlisted will be awarded £10,000.
Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain and chairman of the Turner Prize jury, said: “It is an honour to announce such a fantastic shortlist of artists and I cannot wait to see their exhibition at Tate Britain this autumn.
“All four of them make work that is full of life. They show how contemporary art can fascinate, surprise and move us, and how it can speak powerfully of complex identities and memories, often through the subtlest of details.
“In the Turner Prize’s 40th year, this shortlist proves that British artistic talent is as rich and vibrant as ever.”
At a press conference at the Tate Britain, Mr Farquharson also defended sponsorship donations when asked about the John Browne Charitable Trust and the Uggla Family Foundation contributing £30,000 to the prize.
He said that outside funding is “just part of the mix of how we how we fund our activities” and the prize “remains relevant” and the public “come in very large numbers” to view the works.
Kaur is on the list for Alter Altar at Tramway, Glasgow, which was aimed at showcasing her growing up in Glasgow’s Sikh community.
The exhibition used family photos, an Axminster carpet, a vintage Ford Escort, Irn-Bru and kinetic hand bells.
Rosie Cooper, director of Wysing Arts Centre, who sits on the judging panel told journalists that Kaur sees the vehicle as a “representation of her dad’s first car and his migrant desires” and it “blasted snippets of uplifting pop songs referencing freedom and liberation throughout the space”.
Kaur, 37, who lives in London, had previously showcased her work at the Victoria and Albert Museum by looking at popular Indian cinema through Yoorup.
Johnson has been given the nod for her solo exhibition Presence at The Courtauld Gallery in London, and Drawn Out at Ortuzar Projects, New York.
She uses portraits of black women and men in a combination of pastels, gouache and watercolour and was praised by the judges for her “sensitive and dramatic use of line, colour, space and scale to express empathy and intimacy with her subjects”.
Johnson, 64, received an MBE from the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace in June 2022 after being named in the New Year’s Honours List for her services to the arts.
Le Bas’s Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning at Secession art institute in Vienna saw painted fabrics hung, with theatrical costumes and sculptures also part of the exhibit.
The 58-year-old artist, who lives in Worthing, was inspired by the death of her grandmother and the history of the Roma people.
The jury said they “were impressed by the energy and immediacy present in this exhibition, and its powerful expression of making art in a time of chaos”.
Ms Cooper also said that the human animal hybrids in the work were “combined with mythical female figures and references to Gustav Klimt’s famous Beethoven Frieze, which is permanently installed nearby”.
Abad’s solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford includes drawing, etchings and sculptures which have been combined to “ask questions of museums”, according to the jury.
He also references the museum’s collection including a deer-hide hanging, which belonged to the father of Pocahontas, along with the disputed Benin Bronzes that have sat in various collections in the UK.
The 40-year-old, who works in London, reflects on colonial history and growing up in the Philippines where his parents struggled against authoritarianism.
The title of his exhibit is a nod to Mark Twain’s To the Person Sitting In Darkness, which hit out at imperialism.
An exhibition of the shortlisted work will be held at Tate Britain from September 25 to February 16.
The winner will be announced at an award ceremony at Tate Britain on December 3.
Pottery maker Sir Grayson Perry, film director and visual artist Sir Steve McQueen and artist Damien Hirst are among those who have picked up the prize.
