Turner Prize
A prominent event in British culture, the prize has been awarded by various distinguished celebrities: in 2006 this was Yoko Ono, and in 2012 it was presented by Jude Law.
Controversy has also come from other directions, including Culture Minister Kim Howells criticising exhibits, a guest of honour (Madonna) swearing, prize judge Lynn Barber writing in the press, and a speech by Sir Nicholas Serota about the purchase of a trustee's work.
Channel 4's head of arts at the time, Waldemar Januszczak, was influential in helping set the format for the prize in the following years, such as arguing for the age limit of 50 that was in place from 1991 until 2017.
[10] It was announced the following day that Tate and Turner Contemporary (the gallery hosting that year's prize) had mutually agreed to terminate the sponsorship with Stagecoach.
[11] As much as the shortlist of artists reflects the state of British Art, the composition of the panel of judges, which includes curators and critics, provides some indication of who holds influence institutionally and internationally, as well as who are rising stars.
Other nominees included Terry Atkinson, sculptor Tony Cragg, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Milena Kalinovska and painting/printing artist John Walker.
The appointment of Tate Director Nicholas Serota led to many changes such as the introduction of an annual rehang of the Collection and giving priority to modern and contemporary art.
Other nominees included the Young British Artist (yBA) Damien Hirst for his installations, photographer David Tremlett and sculptor Alison Wilding.
She refused to accept the money at first, but changed her mind when she heard the cash was to be burned instead, and gave £30,000 of it to artists in financial need and the other £10,000 to the housing charity, Shelter.
[35][36] The winner, Gillian Wearing, showed a video 60 minutes of Silence (1996), where a group of actors were dressed in police uniforms and had to stand still for an hour (occasional surreptitious scratching could be observed).
The discussion was chaired by Tim Marlow and also included Roger Scruton, Waldemar Januszczak, Richard Cork, David Sylvester and Norman Rosenthal.
[39] The talking point was Chris Ofili's use of balls of elephant dung attached to his mixed media images on canvas, as well as being used as supports on the floor to prop them up.
[40] The jury included musician Neil Tennant, author Marina Warner, curator Fumio Nanjo and British Council officer Ann Gallagher, chaired by Nicholas Serota.
Other entries included a large painting by Glenn Brown based very closely on a science fiction illustration published some years previously.
The Stuckist art group staged their first demonstration against the prize, dressed as clowns, describing it as an "ongoing national joke" and "a state-funded advertising agency for Charles Saatchi", adding "the only artist who wouldn't be in danger of winning the Turner Prize is Turner", and concluding that it "should be re-named The Duchamp Award for the destruction of artistic integrity".
The media focused on a large display by Fiona Banner whose wall-size text piece, Arsewoman in Wonderland, described a pornographic film in detail.
Jake and Dinos Chapman caused press attention for a sculpture, Death, that appeared to be two cheap plastic blow-up sex dolls with a dildo.
[citation needed] The media focused on a large computer simulation of a former hideout of Osama bin Laden by Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell, as well as the fact that one of their exhibits, a film in a Kabul courtroom was withdrawn as it related to an ongoing trial of a suspected Afghan warlord.
[13] Betting favourite Jeremy Deller won the prize with his film Memory Bucket, documenting both George W. Bush's hometown Crawford, Texas – and the siege in Waco nearby.
Before introducing him, Sir Nicholas Serota, in an "unusual, possibly unprecedented" move, took the opportunity to make "an angry defence" of the Tate's purchase of The Upper Room.
[57] The judges commended Wallinger's work for its "immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance", and called it "a bold political statement with art's ability to articulate fundamental human truths.
[61] Instead, art group AAS re-enacted previous Stuckist demonstrations in protest against their own practice at the Royal Standard Turner Prize Extravaganza.
[63] The nominees were Runa Islam, Mark Leckey, Goshka Macuga, and Cathy Wilkes; the Prize exhibition opened at Tate Britain on 30 September and the winner was announced on 1 December.
She was the first artist ever to win with a purely aural work, having made an installation under three bridges in Glasgow in which she sang folklorised versions of the sea shanty "Lowlands Away".
[71] The nominees for the 2012 prize were Spartacus Chetwynd, Luke Fowler (graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art), Paul Noble and Elizabeth Price.
The shortlisted artists were Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani, who were jointly awarded the prize as a collective following their request to be considered as a single group.
[86] The 10 artists to receive bursaries were: Oreet Ashery, Liz Johnson Artur, Shawanda Corbett, Jamie Crewe, Sean Edwards, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Ima-Abasi Okon, Imran Perretta, Alberta Whittle, and the political arts organisation Arika.
[87] Hosted in Coventry, the 2021 nominees were Array Collective, Black Obsidian Sound System, Cooking Sections,[88] Gentle/Radical, and Project Art Works.
[97] The Delaine Le Bas installation at the 2024 Turner Prize came under scrutiny for suspected plagiarism of an earlier work by Edgeworth Johnstone, who was protesting outside Tate Britain on the day of the award ceremony.
In 1999, Trevor Prideaux organized the ongoing Turnip Prize as "a crap art competition... You can enter anything you like, but it must be rubbish"; the judging criteria include "Lack of effort" and "Is it shit?"
