IN response to the pandemic, Tate Britain announced last month that the Turner Prize would not take place this year – instead a jury would decide upon 10 artists to receive bursaries. Following a 12-month process to consider the nominees, the jury have chosen the artists for their significant contributions to British contemporary art.
Tate Britain, Exterior
Today the winners were announced, each receiving £10,000 bursaries. Arika, Liz Johnson Artur, Oreet Ashery, Shawanda Corbett, Jamie Crewe, Sean Edwards, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Ima-Abasi Okon, Imran Perretta and Alberta Whittle have been named as the successful nominees.
Arika, boychild, Untitled Hand Dance, at Arika’s Episode 10: A Means Without End, Tramway,Glasgow 2019. Photograph: Barry Esson
Arika is an Edinburgh-based political artist organisation whose work encourages connections between art and social change. Selected for their project – Episode 10: A Means Without End, presented at Glasgow was a five-day project with various events exploring maths and physics as analogies of existence and social experience.
Installation view of Liz Johnson Artur: If you know the beginning, the end is no trouble at the South London Gallery, 2019. Photograph: Andy Stagg
Liz Johnson Artur is a London-based Ghanian-Russian photographer, her work focuses on the African diaspora in an ongoing project titled the Black Balloon Archive.
Revisiting Genesis (2016) at “Misbehaving Bodies: Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery” at the Wellcome Collection, London, 2019. Image courtesy of the artist and the Wellcome Collection, London
Oreet Ashery is a London-based artist who’s projects span moving image, performance, photography, workshops, writing and assemblages. Exploring issues of gender, autoethnography, fiction, biopolitics and community, Ashery was selected for her contribution to Misbehaving Bodies: Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery at the Wellcome Collection, which explored lived experiences of care and chronic illness.
Neighbourhood Garden, Courtesy: The Artistand Corvi-Mora, London, Photo: Marcus Leith
Shawanda Corbett’s expansive practice combines ceramics, paintings and performance to question the idea of the ‘complete’ body. Oxford-based Corbett’s ceramic vessels convey politically charged interpretations of real people.
Jamie Crewe The Ideal Bar- Le Narcisse-Alec’s” (2020), still, Courtesy the artist and copyright Jamie Crewe
Artist and singer, Jamie Crewe produces work that navigates issues of identity, power, desire, community and history through video, sculpture and drawing. Selected for their ‘sister’ exhibitions in Birmingham, a project inspired by Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness and its reverberations for LGBTQIA+ people to this day.
Sean Edwards, Undo Things Done (Wales in Venice), 2019 in parallel with the past i-iv, 2019, UV curable ink printed direct to medium density fibreboard substrate, perforated hardboard, plywood, hardboard, automotive spray paint, graphite, colouring pencil, household emulsion, plywood, wood glue and steel. Photograph: Jamie Woodley. Image Courtesy the Artist and Tanya Leighton gallery, Berlin.
Sean Edwards explores personal family histories through an intersection of sculptural objects and mixed media installations. He was selected for his installation, Undo Things Done at the Venice Biennale which traversed issues of class, austerity and loss in a video reflecting on his own experience growing up on a council estate.
Sidsel Meineche Hansen, End-Used City, computer-generated images, game controller, PC, video, sound, duration: 12 min., 2019. Installation view, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Welcome to End-Used City, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2019. Photograph: Andy Keate.
Sidsel Meineche Hansen investigates the manipulation and manufacturing of virtual, robotic and human bodies in our capitalist, technology-driven society – particularly focussing on the influence of the pharmaceutical, pornographic, gaming and tech industries.
Ima-Abasi Okon,Infinite Slippage: nonRepugnant Insolvencies T!-a!-r!-r!-y!-i!-n!-g! as Hand Claps of M’s Hard’ Loved’ Flesh[I’Mirreducibly-undone because]—Quantum Leanage-Complex-Dub (2019) Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, 2019. Commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist. Photograph: Andy Keate
Ima-Abasi Okon is a London and Amsterdam-based artist working with sculpture, video, sound and installation. Selected for her exhibition featuring industrial air conditioners as hosts for a multi-channel sound piece – Infinite Slippage: nonRepugnant Insolvencies T!-a!-r!-r!-y!-i!-n!-g! as Hand Claps of M’s Hard’Loved’Flesh [I’M irreducibly-undone because] —Quantum Leanage-Complex-Dub.
Imran Perretta, the destructors (2019). Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, 2020. the destructors is produced by Chisenhale Gallery and Spike Island, Bristol, and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery; Spike Island; the Whitworth, The University of Manchester; and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. Courtesy of the artist. Photograph: Andy Keate.
Exploring marginality and cultural history through film Imran Perretta uses film, performance, sound and poetry. Selected for his film, the destructors 2019, exploring his coming of age experiences as a young man of Bangladeshi heritage.
Alberta Whittle: How Flexible Can We Make the Mouth, installation view, Dundee Contemporary Arts, 2019. Photograph: Ruth Clark
Living and working between Barbados, Scotland and South Africa, Alberta Whittle‘s work is rooted in the experiences of the diaspora. Whittle’s work tackles anti-blackness and the trauma, memory and ecological concerns which come in the aftermath of slavery and colonialism through performance, video, photography, collage and sculpture.
The Turner Prize is set to return to its exhibition format next year, but this year’s bursary scheme has allowed important financial backing to these interdisciplinary artists during these unstable times.
by Rosie Fitter