Tate Britain today unveils an exhibition of work by the four artists shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2024: Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur and Delaine Le Bas. The exhibition will run from 25 September 2024 to 16 February 2025. The winner will be announced at an award ceremony at Tate Britain on 3 December 2024. This marks the prize’s 40th anniversary, as well as its return to Tate Britain for the first time in six years.
Pio Abad presents a restaging of his nominated exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which explores cultural loss and colonial histories. Featuring drawings, sculptures and museum artefacts, Abad brings together in-depth research and collaboration to highlight overlooked histories and connections to everyday life, often from the perspective of his Filipino heritage. Newly added works include Kiss the Hand You Cannot Bite 2019, which reimagines an Imelda Marcos bracelet as a three-metre concrete sculpture, are shown alongside works like I am singing a song that can only be borne after losing a country 2023, a drawing that turns the underside of Powhatan’s Mantle - a Native American robe in the Ashmolean’s collection - into an imagined map of colonised lands.
Claudette Johnson presents a series of works from her nominated exhibitions at The Courtauld Gallery, London and Ortuzar Projects, New York, alongside new works. Using pastels, gouache, oil and watercolour, Johnson creates striking figurative portraits of Black women and men, often depicting family and friends. Her works counter the marginalisation of Black people in Western art history, shifting perspectives and investing her portraits with a palpable sense of presence. Friends in Green + Red on Yellow 2023 represents a recent development in her practice of creating double portraits, whilst Pieta 2024 is one of the artist’s first works on wood, made from pastel and oil on bark cloth.
Jasleen Kaur presents works from her nominated exhibition at Tramway, Glasgow. Rethinking tradition, Kaur creates sculptures from gathered and remade objects, each animated through an immersive sound composition. Items including family photos, a harmonium, Axminster carpet and kinetic worship bells are orchestrated to convey the artist’s upbringing in Glasgow. A central feature is music, which is used to explore both inherited and hidden histories. Yearnings 2023, is an improvised vocal soundscape of the artist’s voice, which is layered over snippets of pop songs playing from the speakers of Sociomobile 2023, a vintage Ford Escort covered with a large doily crocheted from cotton and filling the space with Kaur’s own musical memory.
Delaine Le Bas presents a restaging of her nominated exhibition at the Secession, Vienna. For her Turner Prize presentation, the artist has transformed the gallery into a monumental immersive environment filled with painted fabrics, costume, film and sculpture. Presented across three chambers, the work addresses themes of death, loss and renewal, and draws on the rich cultural history of the Roma people and the artist’s engagement with mythologies. Textile sculpture Marley 2023, for example, reimagines Dickens’ ghostly eponymous character as a harbinger of chaos, welcoming the viewer to this carefully constructed and captivating world, whilst the film Incipit Vita Nova 2023, projected onto organdie fabric, transports the viewer deep into a dreamlike sequence, matching the fluidity and distortion of the mirrored walls around it.
Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain and chair of the Turner Prize jury said: “This year’s artists each make vibrant and varied work that reflects not just their personal memories and familial stories, but also speaks to wider questions of identity, myth, belonging and community. Through their varied practices, they offer us a lens through which to reconsider both our tangled histories and our shared futures.”
One of the world’s best-known prizes for the visual arts, the Turner Prize aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art. Established in 1984, the prize is named after the radical painter JMW Turner (1775-1851) and is awarded each year to a British artist for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work. The Turner Prize winner will be awarded £25,000 with £10,000 awarded to each of the other shortlisted artists.
Turner Prize 2024 is supported by The John Browne Charitable Trust and The Uggla Family Foundation. The members of the Turner Prize 2024 jury are Rosie Cooper, Director of Wysing Arts Centre; Ekow Eshun, writer, broadcaster and curator; Sam Thorne, Director General and CEO at Japan House London; and Lydia Yee, curator and art historian. The jury is chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain.
Curated by Linsey Young, Curator, Contemporary British Art and Amy Emmerson Martin, Assistant Curator, Contemporary British Art, with Sade Sarumi, Curatorial Assistant, Contemporary British Art and Laura Laing, Exhibition Assistant.
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