Turner Prize 2024: An Assured Display Of Challenging Art, Despite Uncertainty Surrounding The Prize’s Modern Structural Integrity
Returning to the Tate Britain after its departure to Eastbourne last year, the Turner Prize’s famous neoclassical home on the Thames is far from inconspicuous. Yet, wandering through a series of ambiguously themed rooms, hallway spaces and multi-faced installation by Alvaro Barrington, I seemed no closer to reaching the exhibition—it was almost as if the building itself was hiding it. In recent years it’s been no secret that the Turner Prize has struggled both to find sponsors and to define its modern cultural relevance. No longer attracting the speculation and noise it did in the 90s, it has seemed to lose its way, struggling to construct an identity and build on its mission to inspire debate and critique in the British art scene. As the media turned away, and its cultural stronghold dwindled, the Turner Prize seemed hesitant yet immovable, with its outdated competition structure and unclear selection process. Whilst the mission of the exhibition may seem unsteady, the 2024 nominees certainly do not. Pio Abad, Jasleen Kaur, Delaine Le bas and Claudette Johnson present their rooms with qualified assurance. The art is compelling, and each artist’s approach is unique and challenging, exploring the cultural origin and enveloping the viewer in a sensory experience from start to finish. Undoubtedly, comparing one artist against another to predict the winner of the £25,000 prize feels counterproductive. However, when questions of structure and the exhibition's identity are set aside, the art from this year's nominees shines through.
Upon entrance to the exhibition, viewers are confronted with a concrete sculpture of smooth spherical shapes arranged beside one another. There is a strain between the viewer and the object as the sculpture’s low position on the floor creates an immediate sense of disconnection. Individual components are arranged to show the mock-up of a ruby necklace. The sense of spatial tension is reaffirmed when one comes to understand the content of Pio Abad’s sculpture, a model of a necklace of Imelda Marcos, former First Lady of the Phillippines and convicted criminal. After martial law imposed by her husband collapsed, the couple were exiled to Hawaii where a 30-carat ruby was seized by US customs and is now hidden in a vault from public view in a Philippine Government vault. In Abad's own words, the sculpture is the reproduction of a body of evidence chronicling the excesses of empire. Abad's work attempts to grapple with the role of museums in perpetuating and displaying colonial history, whilst physically reconstructing narratives of objects by reshaping their context and meaning. Abad not only critiques the imperial agenda of museums but also reclaims space for marginalized communities, challenging the dominant colonial perspectives typically embedded in such institutions.
The concept of the room is to redefine forms in response to their political and cultural entanglements. For many of the works, Abad drew on his experience in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum archives, considering tales of colonialism and theft. Of all Abad’s works, perhaps the most intriguing is the intricate carbon transfer drawing of intertwining pink lines, half map half vein. The drawing presents us with a reexamination of a deer hide robe from the Ashmolean Museum, an object that marks the first contact between Native American people and British colonial settlers. Abad has reconsidered the robe from its underside, retracing its journey through stolen lands. The body of work is uncomfortable in its very self; the object of study is constantly being reevaluated and redefined. The constant revaluation of purpose is perhaps at odds with the exhibition itself, which has experienced little structural change since its founding, beyond minor adaptations like the removal of an age limit in 2017 and expansion of location from 2007 onwards.
Jasleen Kaur’s room draws on her upbringing in Glasgow, attempting to reconcile personal memory and experience with wider stories of assimilation, diasporic identity and the experience of gathering and devotion. She presents an intimate yet politically charged collage of objects and photos, layered with soundscapes of her own voice, music and mechanical chimes. Metallic streamers and suspended IRN-BRU cans populate the ceiling space as photos of Sikhs and Muslims praying together are pasted on the floor alongside images of immigration enforcement vans on Glasgow streets. Wooden hands mechanically chime with miniature cymbals atop a trestle table draped in garish lilac silks. The visual experience of the room as a viewer is unique. Neither a single installation nor separate artworks, Kaur creates mixed media vignettes of materials and imagery to explore different ideas and components, which seem to create an innately complex and intense exploration of British identity. As I approach the centrepiece of the exhibition, a red Ford draped in a giant doily, its blaring Sufi music is interspersed by disapproving grunts from a pair of older women staring at the car. It’s a bit beyond me, one pronounces, staring puzzled at the piece. In a way, Kaur's work is intentionally opaque—there is no effort to create a cohesive response to the individual elements and narratives of the room. It is an exploration of community which has no conclusion, a room steeped in history yet simultaneously breathing and alive.
The exhibition continues into an immersive environment devoid of gallery walls, the work of the third nominee Delaine Le Bas. The space is enveloped by draped and painted sheets of calico, with structural zoning from metallic walls creating sub-rooms and ethereal tent-like structures adorned with decoration. Some areas are highly autobiographical, exploring themes of the artist’s British-Romani heritage and relationship to her family and to death, whilst others are charged with feminist storytelling and ancient mythology. The room is steeped in symbolism with pyramids, cat-like figures, sunrays, skulls, horses and mythical outstretched hands interspersed throughout the space. In one zone a corner canopy has been constructed, perhaps echoing a memorial, with an enigmatic collection of ghostly figures and a radiant sun suspended above a low table with wood-cut legs. The artistic process is highly visible; stitching, embellishment, and paint dribbles all tell a story of the artist’s cultural, political and gender narrative through marginalized art forms. Fabric and the arts of the domestic sphere seem a fitting choice for Le Bas to communicate ideas of identity, grief and renewal.
Lastly, Claudette Johnson displays her large pastel portraits – a recreation of her critically acclaimed exhibition at the Courtauld. The return to the traditional gallery setup from the last rooms gives no letup in challenging the relationship between the viewer and the artwork. Proximity and space are constantly in question, a recurring theme of the entire exhibition. Johnson explores the ever-present redefining of the black experience and attempts to give agency to the women she represents, moving beyond the passive subject. ‘Figure in Blue’ is perhaps one of her most captivating works. Other canvases in the collection explore the position of young black men in wider society, an investigation inspired by her relationship with her sons. She uses lines to constantly consider an ever-present shifting, moving and reworking of oneself. Johnson is inspired by the sociologist Stuart Hall and his work on the unstable identity of black people, a constant construct rather than simply a present state. Her works, aided by their scale feel monumental. Her depiction of flesh is tender, subtle, and dynamic. Yet the figures often stand isolated, firmly establishing a boundary of privacy between themselves and the viewer, as she navigates the space between the public and private self.
The Turner Prize presents an eclectic and thought-provoking display of some of Britain’s most interesting artists. For those craving newness beyond that of the great master exhibitions scattered across London’s galleries currently, the Turner Prize is a must-see. Moving beyond the noise of the prize's modern identity and purpose, which no doubt still needs to be addressed, this year’s nominees present art that is highly related to contemporary social and political issues. Their work challenges the conventional, inviting the audience to reconsider narratives around identity, heritage, and the purpose of the Modern British Exhibition.
The Turner Prize 2024 runs until the 16th of February 2025—tickets are £5 with a student art pass.
Edited by Oisín McGilloway, Editor-in-Chief
