Emilie Harris reports on this year’s winner of the prestigious Turner Prize and those who narrowly missed out.
On the 2 of December, Laure Prouvost was announced as the winner of the Turner Prize in Derry-Londonderry. The other nominated artists were Tino Sehgal, David Shrigley and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The Turner Prize, established in 1984, is arguably one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary art awards, showcasing work by British artists under 50.
The award itself has a value of £40,000 with £5,000 for each short-listed artist, and £25,000 for the winner. They are nominated for outstanding exhibitions or other work, promoting discussion and development within the contemporary art world causing the Turner Prize to be widely recognised as a greatly influential event for the visual arts.
Laure Prouvost’s work ‘Wantee’ at Tate Britain is a film situated within an atmospheric installation, employing the idea of story telling to create a personal approach with the piece. The scene in which the film is shown is set as a tea party, which is where the title of the installation originates, “Want tea?”. There is an abundance of tea sets, photos and drawings, all meaning to emulate the belongings of her fictitious artist Grandfather and so the spectator feels that they are heavily involved within the story. Her deliberate grammatically incorrect interpretation of English from her native French narrates the film, making the piece surprising and unpredictable, especially when the film quickly cuts to various montages.
Other short-listed artists included Tino Sehgal, an artist showcasing his works ‘This Variation’ and ‘These Associations’ at Tate Modern, consisting of live encounters that are both improvised and structured between people. Through participation, Sehgal emphasises the limits of artistic material and audience perception in a suggestive way. An example of his work, ‘This is Exchange’, exhibits spectators in a simple empty space who have been offered money in exchange to discuss the economy with Sehgal’s local collaborators, emphasising the irony of the topic of conversation.
David Shrigley’s exhibition at Hayward Gallery, ‘David Shrigley: Brain Activity’ displayed an unseen perspective of his work, showing not only his well-known and loved drawings, but also his photography, film, and sculpture. This exhibition reveled in Shrigley’s humour towards his work, the idea of his sculptures being that when drawn from life, the proportions of the sculpture somehow make the accurate drawing look bad. It is these little humorous touches that create the manifesto behind Shrigley’s work.
The final short-listed artist is Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, for her exhibition of ‘Extracts and Verses’ at Chisenhale Gallery. The paintings in her exhibition provoke the question of how we read pictures, especially in regards to dark subjects. The ideas of portraiture with imaginary people and invented pre-histories raise these questions by appearing to be traditional, but they are in fact innovative in terms of portraiture as Yiadom-Boakye creates these characters spontaneously as she paints.
Laure Prouvost’s idea of creating two pieces of art, the film and the installation, work harmoniously to create one singular piece that is unique and complex, especially as there is an in depth story and sequence behind the film itself. This factor is more than likely to be one of the many reasons Prouvost was blessed with the title of being the Turner Prize Winner 2013.
The exhibition showcasing the Turner Prize 2013 short-listed works is held in Ebrington in Derry-Londonderry from the 23 October 2023 till the 5 January 2014.
