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Five art collectives will this year battle it out for the Turner prize, the first time no individual artist has been shortlisted for what remains one of the world’s best-known awards for visual art.
The choice of collectives reflects the fact that few artists have been able to publicly show anything over the past year. It prompted judges to focus on groups of artists whose collaborative work has demonstrably continued, not always in the confines of a gallery.
The shortlist is Array Collective, Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S), Cooking Sections, Gentle/Radical, and Project Art Works.
Many fans of the Turner prize will be thrilled to see it back after it was cancelled last year. Judges had spent a year visiting hundreds of exhibitions across the world in preparation for naming a shortlist but the pandemic made it impossible, said organisers, to continue in its normal form. Instead 10 bursaries of £10,000 were given to deserving artists.
This year’s exhibition will be held at the Herbert art gallery and museum in Coventry, as part of its 2021 city of culture events.
Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain and chair of the judges, said: “One of the great joys of the Turner prize is the way it captures and reflects the mood of the moment in contemporary British art.
“After a year of lockdowns when very few artists have been able to exhibit publicly, the jury has selected five outstanding collectives whose work has not only continued through the pandemic but become even more relevant as a result.”
All the collectives are socially engaged. Array Collective is a group of 11 Belfast-based artists who have been actively collaborating since 2016, organising projects which respond to issues including abortion rights, queer liberation, mental health, gentrification and social welfare. Judges praised them for their “use of DIY sensibility to tackle issues facing Northern Ireland”.
B.O.S.S is a London-based collective which works across art, sound and activism. It was formed in 2018 by and for QTIBPOC (Queer, Trans and Intersex Black and People of Colour).
Cooking Sections is a London-based duo, Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe, who are essentially food art activists. Recent work highlighting the conditions of farmed salmon prompted Tate to take it off its menus completely.
Gentle/Radical were established in Cardiff in 2016 and describe themselves as “an artists-and-others-run project” with an ethos that “the marginal is our mainstream”. They advocate art as a tool for social change. Judges praised members of the group for their “deep commitment to the hyperlocal community of Riverside in which they are based”.
Project Art Works is a collective of neurodiverse artists and makers based in Hastings, East Sussex. Judges praised their continuing work through the pandemic with passersby able to see examples through the windows of the closed gallery Hastings Contemporary.
The Turner prize is one of the highlights of the contemporary art calendar, delighting and exasperating people since 1984.
The judging panel consists of actor Russell Tovey; Aaron Cezar, director of the Delfina Foundation in London; Kim McAleese, programme director of Grand Union in Birmingham; and Zoé Whitley, director of the Chisenhale Gallery in London.
An exhibition of work by all five collectives will run from 29 September at the Herbert and the £25,000 winner announced at an award ceremony at Coventry Cathedral on 1 December.
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