Turner Prize 2008
Annie Blinkhorn, Tuesday, 13th May 2008
The Turner Prize 2008 shortlist was revealed this morning at a press conference at Tate Britain. Making the announcement were jury chair and Tate Britain director Stephen Deuchar and two members of the panel; Suzanne Cotter, curator, Modern Art Oxford and Jennifer Higgie, editor of Frieze Magazine. The £25,000 award – given to a UK-based artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition, or other presentation of their work in the last 12 months – will go to Runa Islam, Mark Leckey, Goshka Macuga or Cathy Wilkes. The Turner Prize exhibition, featuring the work of all four, opens in the autumn.
So, what to expect? A lot of video, as three of the artists work heavily with film installations, and mixed media sculpture, from Macuga and Wilkes in particular.
A multi-cultural British society is represented by the shortlist – Islam is Bangladeshi-born, Macuga is Polish and Wilkes hails from Northern Ireland. But it was the nomination of white Englishman Leckey (whose work, ‘Resident Poster’, is pictured) that drew the only questions from the floor and who was discussed as much in terms of his personality – ‘a dandy … in a band’ said Cotter – as his art. Of the four, Leckey’s work was perhaps the most interesting to the press as he references mainstream subjects – The Simpsons and the blockbuster film Titanic – both as popular in the public imagination as it’s possible to get. We will have to wait until on 1 December to see if the panel agrees.
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