Let's all stop being weird about the Turner Prize
Is it time to rethink how we talk about the UK's most prestigious art award?
By
Adam Wells
December 5, 2024
The Turner Prize has always straddled a strange line in the art world, simultaneously accused from different quarters of being either too ‘establishment’ or completely alienating to the general public. This year’s winning work by Jasleen Kaur, for example, has already been dismissed by certain outlets as nothing more than a Ford Escort covered by a doily, with no mention of the artist’s intent behind the work, or the powerful experience of witnessing the overwhelming, musical installation in-person. Conversely, given the ever-shifting nature of ‘contemporary’ art, today’s cutting-edge quickly becomes tomorrow’s pedestrian, as former prize-winner Grayson Perry reflects on in Playing to the Gallery, describing himself as “a fully paid-up member of the art establishment”.
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Even the nineteenth-century painter J.M.W. Turner, who serves as the prize’s namesake, cannot escape this pattern. It is difficult to reconcile the works that now adorn the walls of the Royal Academy and the National Gallery with their description by a contemporary critic as “the product of a diseased eye and a reckless hand”. Just as Turner himself attracted controversy for his flouting of artistic convention, The Turner Prize has always delighted in spotlighting the young, radical ‘upstarts’ of contemporary art, from the attention-grabbing provocation of the YBA (Young British Artist) movement to the disruption of its own conventions in splitting the prize between all four nominees in 2019.
But, as the prize itself approaches middle age (it celebrated its 40th anniversary this year by returning to its traditional home at Tate Britain), is there a danger of its reputation overtaking it? This year’s winner, in a FAD Magazine article declaring “another win for meme culture”, was compared to the much-maligned Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million banana taped to a gallery wall. However, it feels wrong to dismiss Jasleen Kaur’s work as equally glib; while Sociomobile (the aforementioned red Ford Escort) may be the attention-grabbing centrepiece of the prize, it is contextualised by an entire exhibition, Alter Altar, which surrounds it.
First displayed at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2023, Alter Altar is a celebration not just of Kaur’s own twin cultures, but of the entire community of the Indian diaspora in Glasgow. It is simultaneously personal (the now famous Ford Escort was chosen as the first car the artist’s father owned in the UK) and community-focused. While the exhibition could have lost some of its potency in its migration down south to Tate Britain, its knowingly incongruent blend of cultures remains just as intriguing. Covered by frosted glass to recreate the perma-grey Glasgow skyline, signifiers from Irn-Bru to tapes of devotional qawwali music are all appropriated with equal importance. But beneath these surface-level details, in the exhibition as in life, photographs illustrate acts of everyday community and solidarity, from the found photographs depicting Sikhs alongside Muslims to protestors surrounding and blocking an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields.
Kaur’s work, in this sense, demonstrates the best of what the Turner Prize can do: at first glance impenetrably conceptual, but upon closer inspection - and despite knee-jerk headlines - warmly welcoming. It sits alongside previous works, including Tracey Emin’s much-maligned, headline-grabbing My Bed. Long held up as an easy punchline on the apparent vapidity of the prize (and arguably remembered more than Steve McQueen’s winning entry from the same year), the passage of time has been kind to My Bed, now widely regarded as a suitably harrowing depiction of struggles with addiction and mental health issues. Crucially, the unfolding career of Emin since her nomination has contextualised the piece in her wider body of work, with subsequent exhibitions and retrospectives cementing her, to echo Grayson Perry, as a ‘fully paid-up member of the art establishment’.
It’s tempting to suggest that the Turner Prize has ‘grown up’ in the years approaching its fortieth anniversary. In reality, the changes we can observe over the prize’s four decades are less a change in the prize’s attitudes than they are in those of the UK as a whole. Dan Fox, writing for Frieze in 2007, acknowledged it as a barometer of “the mood of British culture” at the time. In the midst of the 90s’ ‘Cool Britannia’ culture, a more antagonistic approach is understandable - and exemplified by Tracey Emin responding to accusations that anyone could have made her work by with “Well, they didn't, did they?”. If this is the case, then Alter Altar serves as a perfect illustration of contemporary Britain as a true melting pot of cultures, seemingly discordant but, upon closer inspection beneath the surface, harmonious.
Turner Prize 2024 is showing at Tate Britain until 16th February 2025.
The Turner Prize has always straddled a strange line in the art world, simultaneously accused from different quarters of being either too ‘establishment’ or completely alienating to the general public. This year’s winning work by Jasleen Kaur, for example, has already been dismissed by certain outlets as nothing more than a Ford Escort covered by a doily, with no mention of the artist’s intent behind the work, or the powerful experience of witnessing the overwhelming, musical installation in-person. Conversely, given the ever-shifting nature of ‘contemporary’ art, today’s cutting-edge quickly becomes tomorrow’s pedestrian, as former prize-winner Grayson Perry reflects on in Playing to the Gallery, describing himself as “a fully paid-up member of the art establishment”.
Even the nineteenth-century painter J.M.W. Turner, who serves as the prize’s namesake, cannot escape this pattern. It is difficult to reconcile the works that now adorn the walls of the Royal Academy and the National Gallery with their description by a contemporary critic as “the product of a diseased eye and a reckless hand”. Just as Turner himself attracted controversy for his flouting of artistic convention, The Turner Prize has always delighted in spotlighting the young, radical ‘upstarts’ of contemporary art, from the attention-grabbing provocation of the YBA (Young British Artist) movement to the disruption of its own conventions in splitting the prize between all four nominees in 2019.
But, as the prize itself approaches middle age (it celebrated its 40th anniversary this year by returning to its traditional home at Tate Britain), is there a danger of its reputation overtaking it? This year’s winner, in a FAD Magazine article declaring “another win for meme culture”, was compared to the much-maligned Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million banana taped to a gallery wall. However, it feels wrong to dismiss Jasleen Kaur’s work as equally glib; while Sociomobile (the aforementioned red Ford Escort) may be the attention-grabbing centrepiece of the prize, it is contextualised by an entire exhibition, Alter Altar, which surrounds it.
First displayed at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2023, Alter Altar is a celebration not just of Kaur’s own twin cultures, but of the entire community of the Indian diaspora in Glasgow. It is simultaneously personal (the now famous Ford Escort was chosen as the first car the artist’s father owned in the UK) and community-focused. While the exhibition could have lost some of its potency in its migration down south to Tate Britain, its knowingly incongruent blend of cultures remains just as intriguing. Covered by frosted glass to recreate the perma-grey Glasgow skyline, signifiers from Irn-Bru to tapes of devotional qawwali music are all appropriated with equal importance. But beneath these surface-level details, in the exhibition as in life, photographs illustrate acts of everyday community and solidarity, from the found photographs depicting Sikhs alongside Muslims to protestors surrounding and blocking an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields.
Kaur’s work, in this sense, demonstrates the best of what the Turner Prize can do: at first glance impenetrably conceptual, but upon closer inspection - and despite knee-jerk headlines - warmly welcoming. It sits alongside previous works, including Tracey Emin’s much-maligned, headline-grabbing My Bed. Long held up as an easy punchline on the apparent vapidity of the prize (and arguably remembered more than Steve McQueen’s winning entry from the same year), the passage of time has been kind to My Bed, now widely regarded as a suitably harrowing depiction of struggles with addiction and mental health issues. Crucially, the unfolding career of Emin since her nomination has contextualised the piece in her wider body of work, with subsequent exhibitions and retrospectives cementing her, to echo Grayson Perry, as a ‘fully paid-up member of the art establishment’.
It’s tempting to suggest that the Turner Prize has ‘grown up’ in the years approaching its fortieth anniversary. In reality, the changes we can observe over the prize’s four decades are less a change in the prize’s attitudes than they are in those of the UK as a whole. Dan Fox, writing for Frieze in 2007, acknowledged it as a barometer of “the mood of British culture” at the time. In the midst of the 90s’ ‘Cool Britannia’ culture, a more antagonistic approach is understandable - and exemplified by Tracey Emin responding to accusations that anyone could have made her work by with “Well, they didn't, did they?”. If this is the case, then Alter Altar serves as a perfect illustration of contemporary Britain as a true melting pot of cultures, seemingly discordant but, upon closer inspection beneath the surface, harmonious.
Turner Prize 2024 is showing at Tate Britain until 16th February 2025.
The Turner Prize has always straddled a strange line in the art world, simultaneously accused from different quarters of being either too ‘establishment’ or completely alienating to the general public. This year’s winning work by Jasleen Kaur, for example, has already been dismissed by certain outlets as nothing more than a Ford Escort covered by a doily, with no mention of the artist’s intent behind the work, or the powerful experience of witnessing the overwhelming, musical installation in-person. Conversely, given the ever-shifting nature of ‘contemporary’ art, today’s cutting-edge quickly becomes tomorrow’s pedestrian, as former prize-winner Grayson Perry reflects on in Playing to the Gallery, describing himself as “a fully paid-up member of the art establishment”.
Even the nineteenth-century painter J.M.W. Turner, who serves as the prize’s namesake, cannot escape this pattern. It is difficult to reconcile the works that now adorn the walls of the Royal Academy and the National Gallery with their description by a contemporary critic as “the product of a diseased eye and a reckless hand”. Just as Turner himself attracted controversy for his flouting of artistic convention, The Turner Prize has always delighted in spotlighting the young, radical ‘upstarts’ of contemporary art, from the attention-grabbing provocation of the YBA (Young British Artist) movement to the disruption of its own conventions in splitting the prize between all four nominees in 2019.
But, as the prize itself approaches middle age (it celebrated its 40th anniversary this year by returning to its traditional home at Tate Britain), is there a danger of its reputation overtaking it? This year’s winner, in a FAD Magazine article declaring “another win for meme culture”, was compared to the much-maligned Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million banana taped to a gallery wall. However, it feels wrong to dismiss Jasleen Kaur’s work as equally glib; while Sociomobile (the aforementioned red Ford Escort) may be the attention-grabbing centrepiece of the prize, it is contextualised by an entire exhibition, Alter Altar, which surrounds it.
First displayed at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2023, Alter Altar is a celebration not just of Kaur’s own twin cultures, but of the entire community of the Indian diaspora in Glasgow. It is simultaneously personal (the now famous Ford Escort was chosen as the first car the artist’s father owned in the UK) and community-focused. While the exhibition could have lost some of its potency in its migration down south to Tate Britain, its knowingly incongruent blend of cultures remains just as intriguing. Covered by frosted glass to recreate the perma-grey Glasgow skyline, signifiers from Irn-Bru to tapes of devotional qawwali music are all appropriated with equal importance. But beneath these surface-level details, in the exhibition as in life, photographs illustrate acts of everyday community and solidarity, from the found photographs depicting Sikhs alongside Muslims to protestors surrounding and blocking an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields.
Kaur’s work, in this sense, demonstrates the best of what the Turner Prize can do: at first glance impenetrably conceptual, but upon closer inspection - and despite knee-jerk headlines - warmly welcoming. It sits alongside previous works, including Tracey Emin’s much-maligned, headline-grabbing My Bed. Long held up as an easy punchline on the apparent vapidity of the prize (and arguably remembered more than Steve McQueen’s winning entry from the same year), the passage of time has been kind to My Bed, now widely regarded as a suitably harrowing depiction of struggles with addiction and mental health issues. Crucially, the unfolding career of Emin since her nomination has contextualised the piece in her wider body of work, with subsequent exhibitions and retrospectives cementing her, to echo Grayson Perry, as a ‘fully paid-up member of the art establishment’.
It’s tempting to suggest that the Turner Prize has ‘grown up’ in the years approaching its fortieth anniversary. In reality, the changes we can observe over the prize’s four decades are less a change in the prize’s attitudes than they are in those of the UK as a whole. Dan Fox, writing for Frieze in 2007, acknowledged it as a barometer of “the mood of British culture” at the time. In the midst of the 90s’ ‘Cool Britannia’ culture, a more antagonistic approach is understandable - and exemplified by Tracey Emin responding to accusations that anyone could have made her work by with “Well, they didn't, did they?”. If this is the case, then Alter Altar serves as a perfect illustration of contemporary Britain as a true melting pot of cultures, seemingly discordant but, upon closer inspection beneath the surface, harmonious.
Turner Prize 2024 is showing at Tate Britain until 16th February 2025.
The Turner Prize has always straddled a strange line in the art world, simultaneously accused from different quarters of being either too ‘establishment’ or completely alienating to the general public. This year’s winning work by Jasleen Kaur, for example, has already been dismissed by certain outlets as nothing more than a Ford Escort covered by a doily, with no mention of the artist’s intent behind the work, or the powerful experience of witnessing the overwhelming, musical installation in-person. Conversely, given the ever-shifting nature of ‘contemporary’ art, today’s cutting-edge quickly becomes tomorrow’s pedestrian, as former prize-winner Grayson Perry reflects on in Playing to the Gallery, describing himself as “a fully paid-up member of the art establishment”.
Even the nineteenth-century painter J.M.W. Turner, who serves as the prize’s namesake, cannot escape this pattern. It is difficult to reconcile the works that now adorn the walls of the Royal Academy and the National Gallery with their description by a contemporary critic as “the product of a diseased eye and a reckless hand”. Just as Turner himself attracted controversy for his flouting of artistic convention, The Turner Prize has always delighted in spotlighting the young, radical ‘upstarts’ of contemporary art, from the attention-grabbing provocation of the YBA (Young British Artist) movement to the disruption of its own conventions in splitting the prize between all four nominees in 2019.
But, as the prize itself approaches middle age (it celebrated its 40th anniversary this year by returning to its traditional home at Tate Britain), is there a danger of its reputation overtaking it? This year’s winner, in a FAD Magazine article declaring “another win for meme culture”, was compared to the much-maligned Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million banana taped to a gallery wall. However, it feels wrong to dismiss Jasleen Kaur’s work as equally glib; while Sociomobile (the aforementioned red Ford Escort) may be the attention-grabbing centrepiece of the prize, it is contextualised by an entire exhibition, Alter Altar, which surrounds it.
First displayed at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2023, Alter Altar is a celebration not just of Kaur’s own twin cultures, but of the entire community of the Indian diaspora in Glasgow. It is simultaneously personal (the now famous Ford Escort was chosen as the first car the artist’s father owned in the UK) and community-focused. While the exhibition could have lost some of its potency in its migration down south to Tate Britain, its knowingly incongruent blend of cultures remains just as intriguing. Covered by frosted glass to recreate the perma-grey Glasgow skyline, signifiers from Irn-Bru to tapes of devotional qawwali music are all appropriated with equal importance. But beneath these surface-level details, in the exhibition as in life, photographs illustrate acts of everyday community and solidarity, from the found photographs depicting Sikhs alongside Muslims to protestors surrounding and blocking an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields.
Kaur’s work, in this sense, demonstrates the best of what the Turner Prize can do: at first glance impenetrably conceptual, but upon closer inspection - and despite knee-jerk headlines - warmly welcoming. It sits alongside previous works, including Tracey Emin’s much-maligned, headline-grabbing My Bed. Long held up as an easy punchline on the apparent vapidity of the prize (and arguably remembered more than Steve McQueen’s winning entry from the same year), the passage of time has been kind to My Bed, now widely regarded as a suitably harrowing depiction of struggles with addiction and mental health issues. Crucially, the unfolding career of Emin since her nomination has contextualised the piece in her wider body of work, with subsequent exhibitions and retrospectives cementing her, to echo Grayson Perry, as a ‘fully paid-up member of the art establishment’.
It’s tempting to suggest that the Turner Prize has ‘grown up’ in the years approaching its fortieth anniversary. In reality, the changes we can observe over the prize’s four decades are less a change in the prize’s attitudes than they are in those of the UK as a whole. Dan Fox, writing for Frieze in 2007, acknowledged it as a barometer of “the mood of British culture” at the time. In the midst of the 90s’ ‘Cool Britannia’ culture, a more antagonistic approach is understandable - and exemplified by Tracey Emin responding to accusations that anyone could have made her work by with “Well, they didn't, did they?”. If this is the case, then Alter Altar serves as a perfect illustration of contemporary Britain as a true melting pot of cultures, seemingly discordant but, upon closer inspection beneath the surface, harmonious.
Turner Prize 2024 is showing at Tate Britain until 16th February 2025.
The Turner Prize has always straddled a strange line in the art world, simultaneously accused from different quarters of being either too ‘establishment’ or completely alienating to the general public. This year’s winning work by Jasleen Kaur, for example, has already been dismissed by certain outlets as nothing more than a Ford Escort covered by a doily, with no mention of the artist’s intent behind the work, or the powerful experience of witnessing the overwhelming, musical installation in-person. Conversely, given the ever-shifting nature of ‘contemporary’ art, today’s cutting-edge quickly becomes tomorrow’s pedestrian, as former prize-winner Grayson Perry reflects on in Playing to the Gallery, describing himself as “a fully paid-up member of the art establishment”.
Even the nineteenth-century painter J.M.W. Turner, who serves as the prize’s namesake, cannot escape this pattern. It is difficult to reconcile the works that now adorn the walls of the Royal Academy and the National Gallery with their description by a contemporary critic as “the product of a diseased eye and a reckless hand”. Just as Turner himself attracted controversy for his flouting of artistic convention, The Turner Prize has always delighted in spotlighting the young, radical ‘upstarts’ of contemporary art, from the attention-grabbing provocation of the YBA (Young British Artist) movement to the disruption of its own conventions in splitting the prize between all four nominees in 2019.
But, as the prize itself approaches middle age (it celebrated its 40th anniversary this year by returning to its traditional home at Tate Britain), is there a danger of its reputation overtaking it? This year’s winner, in a FAD Magazine article declaring “another win for meme culture”, was compared to the much-maligned Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million banana taped to a gallery wall. However, it feels wrong to dismiss Jasleen Kaur’s work as equally glib; while Sociomobile (the aforementioned red Ford Escort) may be the attention-grabbing centrepiece of the prize, it is contextualised by an entire exhibition, Alter Altar, which surrounds it.
First displayed at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2023, Alter Altar is a celebration not just of Kaur’s own twin cultures, but of the entire community of the Indian diaspora in Glasgow. It is simultaneously personal (the now famous Ford Escort was chosen as the first car the artist’s father owned in the UK) and community-focused. While the exhibition could have lost some of its potency in its migration down south to Tate Britain, its knowingly incongruent blend of cultures remains just as intriguing. Covered by frosted glass to recreate the perma-grey Glasgow skyline, signifiers from Irn-Bru to tapes of devotional qawwali music are all appropriated with equal importance. But beneath these surface-level details, in the exhibition as in life, photographs illustrate acts of everyday community and solidarity, from the found photographs depicting Sikhs alongside Muslims to protestors surrounding and blocking an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields.
Kaur’s work, in this sense, demonstrates the best of what the Turner Prize can do: at first glance impenetrably conceptual, but upon closer inspection - and despite knee-jerk headlines - warmly welcoming. It sits alongside previous works, including Tracey Emin’s much-maligned, headline-grabbing My Bed. Long held up as an easy punchline on the apparent vapidity of the prize (and arguably remembered more than Steve McQueen’s winning entry from the same year), the passage of time has been kind to My Bed, now widely regarded as a suitably harrowing depiction of struggles with addiction and mental health issues. Crucially, the unfolding career of Emin since her nomination has contextualised the piece in her wider body of work, with subsequent exhibitions and retrospectives cementing her, to echo Grayson Perry, as a ‘fully paid-up member of the art establishment’.
It’s tempting to suggest that the Turner Prize has ‘grown up’ in the years approaching its fortieth anniversary. In reality, the changes we can observe over the prize’s four decades are less a change in the prize’s attitudes than they are in those of the UK as a whole. Dan Fox, writing for Frieze in 2007, acknowledged it as a barometer of “the mood of British culture” at the time. In the midst of the 90s’ ‘Cool Britannia’ culture, a more antagonistic approach is understandable - and exemplified by Tracey Emin responding to accusations that anyone could have made her work by with “Well, they didn't, did they?”. If this is the case, then Alter Altar serves as a perfect illustration of contemporary Britain as a true melting pot of cultures, seemingly discordant but, upon closer inspection beneath the surface, harmonious.
Turner Prize 2024 is showing at Tate Britain until 16th February 2025.
The Turner Prize has always straddled a strange line in the art world, simultaneously accused from different quarters of being either too ‘establishment’ or completely alienating to the general public. This year’s winning work by Jasleen Kaur, for example, has already been dismissed by certain outlets as nothing more than a Ford Escort covered by a doily, with no mention of the artist’s intent behind the work, or the powerful experience of witnessing the overwhelming, musical installation in-person. Conversely, given the ever-shifting nature of ‘contemporary’ art, today’s cutting-edge quickly becomes tomorrow’s pedestrian, as former prize-winner Grayson Perry reflects on in Playing to the Gallery, describing himself as “a fully paid-up member of the art establishment”.
Even the nineteenth-century painter J.M.W. Turner, who serves as the prize’s namesake, cannot escape this pattern. It is difficult to reconcile the works that now adorn the walls of the Royal Academy and the National Gallery with their description by a contemporary critic as “the product of a diseased eye and a reckless hand”. Just as Turner himself attracted controversy for his flouting of artistic convention, The Turner Prize has always delighted in spotlighting the young, radical ‘upstarts’ of contemporary art, from the attention-grabbing provocation of the YBA (Young British Artist) movement to the disruption of its own conventions in splitting the prize between all four nominees in 2019.
But, as the prize itself approaches middle age (it celebrated its 40th anniversary this year by returning to its traditional home at Tate Britain), is there a danger of its reputation overtaking it? This year’s winner, in a FAD Magazine article declaring “another win for meme culture”, was compared to the much-maligned Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million banana taped to a gallery wall. However, it feels wrong to dismiss Jasleen Kaur’s work as equally glib; while Sociomobile (the aforementioned red Ford Escort) may be the attention-grabbing centrepiece of the prize, it is contextualised by an entire exhibition, Alter Altar, which surrounds it.
First displayed at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2023, Alter Altar is a celebration not just of Kaur’s own twin cultures, but of the entire community of the Indian diaspora in Glasgow. It is simultaneously personal (the now famous Ford Escort was chosen as the first car the artist’s father owned in the UK) and community-focused. While the exhibition could have lost some of its potency in its migration down south to Tate Britain, its knowingly incongruent blend of cultures remains just as intriguing. Covered by frosted glass to recreate the perma-grey Glasgow skyline, signifiers from Irn-Bru to tapes of devotional qawwali music are all appropriated with equal importance. But beneath these surface-level details, in the exhibition as in life, photographs illustrate acts of everyday community and solidarity, from the found photographs depicting Sikhs alongside Muslims to protestors surrounding and blocking an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields.
Kaur’s work, in this sense, demonstrates the best of what the Turner Prize can do: at first glance impenetrably conceptual, but upon closer inspection - and despite knee-jerk headlines - warmly welcoming. It sits alongside previous works, including Tracey Emin’s much-maligned, headline-grabbing My Bed. Long held up as an easy punchline on the apparent vapidity of the prize (and arguably remembered more than Steve McQueen’s winning entry from the same year), the passage of time has been kind to My Bed, now widely regarded as a suitably harrowing depiction of struggles with addiction and mental health issues. Crucially, the unfolding career of Emin since her nomination has contextualised the piece in her wider body of work, with subsequent exhibitions and retrospectives cementing her, to echo Grayson Perry, as a ‘fully paid-up member of the art establishment’.
It’s tempting to suggest that the Turner Prize has ‘grown up’ in the years approaching its fortieth anniversary. In reality, the changes we can observe over the prize’s four decades are less a change in the prize’s attitudes than they are in those of the UK as a whole. Dan Fox, writing for Frieze in 2007, acknowledged it as a barometer of “the mood of British culture” at the time. In the midst of the 90s’ ‘Cool Britannia’ culture, a more antagonistic approach is understandable - and exemplified by Tracey Emin responding to accusations that anyone could have made her work by with “Well, they didn't, did they?”. If this is the case, then Alter Altar serves as a perfect illustration of contemporary Britain as a true melting pot of cultures, seemingly discordant but, upon closer inspection beneath the surface, harmonious.
Turner Prize 2024 is showing at Tate Britain until 16th February 2025.
The Turner Prize has always straddled a strange line in the art world, simultaneously accused from different quarters of being either too ‘establishment’ or completely alienating to the general public. This year’s winning work by Jasleen Kaur, for example, has already been dismissed by certain outlets as nothing more than a Ford Escort covered by a doily, with no mention of the artist’s intent behind the work, or the powerful experience of witnessing the overwhelming, musical installation in-person. Conversely, given the ever-shifting nature of ‘contemporary’ art, today’s cutting-edge quickly becomes tomorrow’s pedestrian, as former prize-winner Grayson Perry reflects on in Playing to the Gallery, describing himself as “a fully paid-up member of the art establishment”.
Even the nineteenth-century painter J.M.W. Turner, who serves as the prize’s namesake, cannot escape this pattern. It is difficult to reconcile the works that now adorn the walls of the Royal Academy and the National Gallery with their description by a contemporary critic as “the product of a diseased eye and a reckless hand”. Just as Turner himself attracted controversy for his flouting of artistic convention, The Turner Prize has always delighted in spotlighting the young, radical ‘upstarts’ of contemporary art, from the attention-grabbing provocation of the YBA (Young British Artist) movement to the disruption of its own conventions in splitting the prize between all four nominees in 2019.
But, as the prize itself approaches middle age (it celebrated its 40th anniversary this year by returning to its traditional home at Tate Britain), is there a danger of its reputation overtaking it? This year’s winner, in a FAD Magazine article declaring “another win for meme culture”, was compared to the much-maligned Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million banana taped to a gallery wall. However, it feels wrong to dismiss Jasleen Kaur’s work as equally glib; while Sociomobile (the aforementioned red Ford Escort) may be the attention-grabbing centrepiece of the prize, it is contextualised by an entire exhibition, Alter Altar, which surrounds it.
First displayed at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2023, Alter Altar is a celebration not just of Kaur’s own twin cultures, but of the entire community of the Indian diaspora in Glasgow. It is simultaneously personal (the now famous Ford Escort was chosen as the first car the artist’s father owned in the UK) and community-focused. While the exhibition could have lost some of its potency in its migration down south to Tate Britain, its knowingly incongruent blend of cultures remains just as intriguing. Covered by frosted glass to recreate the perma-grey Glasgow skyline, signifiers from Irn-Bru to tapes of devotional qawwali music are all appropriated with equal importance. But beneath these surface-level details, in the exhibition as in life, photographs illustrate acts of everyday community and solidarity, from the found photographs depicting Sikhs alongside Muslims to protestors surrounding and blocking an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields.
Kaur’s work, in this sense, demonstrates the best of what the Turner Prize can do: at first glance impenetrably conceptual, but upon closer inspection - and despite knee-jerk headlines - warmly welcoming. It sits alongside previous works, including Tracey Emin’s much-maligned, headline-grabbing My Bed. Long held up as an easy punchline on the apparent vapidity of the prize (and arguably remembered more than Steve McQueen’s winning entry from the same year), the passage of time has been kind to My Bed, now widely regarded as a suitably harrowing depiction of struggles with addiction and mental health issues. Crucially, the unfolding career of Emin since her nomination has contextualised the piece in her wider body of work, with subsequent exhibitions and retrospectives cementing her, to echo Grayson Perry, as a ‘fully paid-up member of the art establishment’.
It’s tempting to suggest that the Turner Prize has ‘grown up’ in the years approaching its fortieth anniversary. In reality, the changes we can observe over the prize’s four decades are less a change in the prize’s attitudes than they are in those of the UK as a whole. Dan Fox, writing for Frieze in 2007, acknowledged it as a barometer of “the mood of British culture” at the time. In the midst of the 90s’ ‘Cool Britannia’ culture, a more antagonistic approach is understandable - and exemplified by Tracey Emin responding to accusations that anyone could have made her work by with “Well, they didn't, did they?”. If this is the case, then Alter Altar serves as a perfect illustration of contemporary Britain as a true melting pot of cultures, seemingly discordant but, upon closer inspection beneath the surface, harmonious.
Turner Prize 2024 is showing at Tate Britain until 16th February 2025.
The Turner Prize has always straddled a strange line in the art world, simultaneously accused from different quarters of being either too ‘establishment’ or completely alienating to the general public. This year’s winning work by Jasleen Kaur, for example, has already been dismissed by certain outlets as nothing more than a Ford Escort covered by a doily, with no mention of the artist’s intent behind the work, or the powerful experience of witnessing the overwhelming, musical installation in-person. Conversely, given the ever-shifting nature of ‘contemporary’ art, today’s cutting-edge quickly becomes tomorrow’s pedestrian, as former prize-winner Grayson Perry reflects on in Playing to the Gallery, describing himself as “a fully paid-up member of the art establishment”.
Even the nineteenth-century painter J.M.W. Turner, who serves as the prize’s namesake, cannot escape this pattern. It is difficult to reconcile the works that now adorn the walls of the Royal Academy and the National Gallery with their description by a contemporary critic as “the product of a diseased eye and a reckless hand”. Just as Turner himself attracted controversy for his flouting of artistic convention, The Turner Prize has always delighted in spotlighting the young, radical ‘upstarts’ of contemporary art, from the attention-grabbing provocation of the YBA (Young British Artist) movement to the disruption of its own conventions in splitting the prize between all four nominees in 2019.
But, as the prize itself approaches middle age (it celebrated its 40th anniversary this year by returning to its traditional home at Tate Britain), is there a danger of its reputation overtaking it? This year’s winner, in a FAD Magazine article declaring “another win for meme culture”, was compared to the much-maligned Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million banana taped to a gallery wall. However, it feels wrong to dismiss Jasleen Kaur’s work as equally glib; while Sociomobile (the aforementioned red Ford Escort) may be the attention-grabbing centrepiece of the prize, it is contextualised by an entire exhibition, Alter Altar, which surrounds it.
First displayed at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2023, Alter Altar is a celebration not just of Kaur’s own twin cultures, but of the entire community of the Indian diaspora in Glasgow. It is simultaneously personal (the now famous Ford Escort was chosen as the first car the artist’s father owned in the UK) and community-focused. While the exhibition could have lost some of its potency in its migration down south to Tate Britain, its knowingly incongruent blend of cultures remains just as intriguing. Covered by frosted glass to recreate the perma-grey Glasgow skyline, signifiers from Irn-Bru to tapes of devotional qawwali music are all appropriated with equal importance. But beneath these surface-level details, in the exhibition as in life, photographs illustrate acts of everyday community and solidarity, from the found photographs depicting Sikhs alongside Muslims to protestors surrounding and blocking an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields.
Kaur’s work, in this sense, demonstrates the best of what the Turner Prize can do: at first glance impenetrably conceptual, but upon closer inspection - and despite knee-jerk headlines - warmly welcoming. It sits alongside previous works, including Tracey Emin’s much-maligned, headline-grabbing My Bed. Long held up as an easy punchline on the apparent vapidity of the prize (and arguably remembered more than Steve McQueen’s winning entry from the same year), the passage of time has been kind to My Bed, now widely regarded as a suitably harrowing depiction of struggles with addiction and mental health issues. Crucially, the unfolding career of Emin since her nomination has contextualised the piece in her wider body of work, with subsequent exhibitions and retrospectives cementing her, to echo Grayson Perry, as a ‘fully paid-up member of the art establishment’.
It’s tempting to suggest that the Turner Prize has ‘grown up’ in the years approaching its fortieth anniversary. In reality, the changes we can observe over the prize’s four decades are less a change in the prize’s attitudes than they are in those of the UK as a whole. Dan Fox, writing for Frieze in 2007, acknowledged it as a barometer of “the mood of British culture” at the time. In the midst of the 90s’ ‘Cool Britannia’ culture, a more antagonistic approach is understandable - and exemplified by Tracey Emin responding to accusations that anyone could have made her work by with “Well, they didn't, did they?”. If this is the case, then Alter Altar serves as a perfect illustration of contemporary Britain as a true melting pot of cultures, seemingly discordant but, upon closer inspection beneath the surface, harmonious.
Turner Prize 2024 is showing at Tate Britain until 16th February 2025.
The Turner Prize has always straddled a strange line in the art world, simultaneously accused from different quarters of being either too ‘establishment’ or completely alienating to the general public. This year’s winning work by Jasleen Kaur, for example, has already been dismissed by certain outlets as nothing more than a Ford Escort covered by a doily, with no mention of the artist’s intent behind the work, or the powerful experience of witnessing the overwhelming, musical installation in-person. Conversely, given the ever-shifting nature of ‘contemporary’ art, today’s cutting-edge quickly becomes tomorrow’s pedestrian, as former prize-winner Grayson Perry reflects on in Playing to the Gallery, describing himself as “a fully paid-up member of the art establishment”.
Even the nineteenth-century painter J.M.W. Turner, who serves as the prize’s namesake, cannot escape this pattern. It is difficult to reconcile the works that now adorn the walls of the Royal Academy and the National Gallery with their description by a contemporary critic as “the product of a diseased eye and a reckless hand”. Just as Turner himself attracted controversy for his flouting of artistic convention, The Turner Prize has always delighted in spotlighting the young, radical ‘upstarts’ of contemporary art, from the attention-grabbing provocation of the YBA (Young British Artist) movement to the disruption of its own conventions in splitting the prize between all four nominees in 2019.
But, as the prize itself approaches middle age (it celebrated its 40th anniversary this year by returning to its traditional home at Tate Britain), is there a danger of its reputation overtaking it? This year’s winner, in a FAD Magazine article declaring “another win for meme culture”, was compared to the much-maligned Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million banana taped to a gallery wall. However, it feels wrong to dismiss Jasleen Kaur’s work as equally glib; while Sociomobile (the aforementioned red Ford Escort) may be the attention-grabbing centrepiece of the prize, it is contextualised by an entire exhibition, Alter Altar, which surrounds it.
First displayed at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2023, Alter Altar is a celebration not just of Kaur’s own twin cultures, but of the entire community of the Indian diaspora in Glasgow. It is simultaneously personal (the now famous Ford Escort was chosen as the first car the artist’s father owned in the UK) and community-focused. While the exhibition could have lost some of its potency in its migration down south to Tate Britain, its knowingly incongruent blend of cultures remains just as intriguing. Covered by frosted glass to recreate the perma-grey Glasgow skyline, signifiers from Irn-Bru to tapes of devotional qawwali music are all appropriated with equal importance. But beneath these surface-level details, in the exhibition as in life, photographs illustrate acts of everyday community and solidarity, from the found photographs depicting Sikhs alongside Muslims to protestors surrounding and blocking an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields.
Kaur’s work, in this sense, demonstrates the best of what the Turner Prize can do: at first glance impenetrably conceptual, but upon closer inspection - and despite knee-jerk headlines - warmly welcoming. It sits alongside previous works, including Tracey Emin’s much-maligned, headline-grabbing My Bed. Long held up as an easy punchline on the apparent vapidity of the prize (and arguably remembered more than Steve McQueen’s winning entry from the same year), the passage of time has been kind to My Bed, now widely regarded as a suitably harrowing depiction of struggles with addiction and mental health issues. Crucially, the unfolding career of Emin since her nomination has contextualised the piece in her wider body of work, with subsequent exhibitions and retrospectives cementing her, to echo Grayson Perry, as a ‘fully paid-up member of the art establishment’.
It’s tempting to suggest that the Turner Prize has ‘grown up’ in the years approaching its fortieth anniversary. In reality, the changes we can observe over the prize’s four decades are less a change in the prize’s attitudes than they are in those of the UK as a whole. Dan Fox, writing for Frieze in 2007, acknowledged it as a barometer of “the mood of British culture” at the time. In the midst of the 90s’ ‘Cool Britannia’ culture, a more antagonistic approach is understandable - and exemplified by Tracey Emin responding to accusations that anyone could have made her work by with “Well, they didn't, did they?”. If this is the case, then Alter Altar serves as a perfect illustration of contemporary Britain as a true melting pot of cultures, seemingly discordant but, upon closer inspection beneath the surface, harmonious.
Turner Prize 2024 is showing at Tate Britain until 16th February 2025.
The Turner Prize has always straddled a strange line in the art world, simultaneously accused from different quarters of being either too ‘establishment’ or completely alienating to the general public. This year’s winning work by Jasleen Kaur, for example, has already been dismissed by certain outlets as nothing more than a Ford Escort covered by a doily, with no mention of the artist’s intent behind the work, or the powerful experience of witnessing the overwhelming, musical installation in-person. Conversely, given the ever-shifting nature of ‘contemporary’ art, today’s cutting-edge quickly becomes tomorrow’s pedestrian, as former prize-winner Grayson Perry reflects on in Playing to the Gallery, describing himself as “a fully paid-up member of the art establishment”.
Even the nineteenth-century painter J.M.W. Turner, who serves as the prize’s namesake, cannot escape this pattern. It is difficult to reconcile the works that now adorn the walls of the Royal Academy and the National Gallery with their description by a contemporary critic as “the product of a diseased eye and a reckless hand”. Just as Turner himself attracted controversy for his flouting of artistic convention, The Turner Prize has always delighted in spotlighting the young, radical ‘upstarts’ of contemporary art, from the attention-grabbing provocation of the YBA (Young British Artist) movement to the disruption of its own conventions in splitting the prize between all four nominees in 2019.
But, as the prize itself approaches middle age (it celebrated its 40th anniversary this year by returning to its traditional home at Tate Britain), is there a danger of its reputation overtaking it? This year’s winner, in a FAD Magazine article declaring “another win for meme culture”, was compared to the much-maligned Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million banana taped to a gallery wall. However, it feels wrong to dismiss Jasleen Kaur’s work as equally glib; while Sociomobile (the aforementioned red Ford Escort) may be the attention-grabbing centrepiece of the prize, it is contextualised by an entire exhibition, Alter Altar, which surrounds it.
First displayed at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2023, Alter Altar is a celebration not just of Kaur’s own twin cultures, but of the entire community of the Indian diaspora in Glasgow. It is simultaneously personal (the now famous Ford Escort was chosen as the first car the artist’s father owned in the UK) and community-focused. While the exhibition could have lost some of its potency in its migration down south to Tate Britain, its knowingly incongruent blend of cultures remains just as intriguing. Covered by frosted glass to recreate the perma-grey Glasgow skyline, signifiers from Irn-Bru to tapes of devotional qawwali music are all appropriated with equal importance. But beneath these surface-level details, in the exhibition as in life, photographs illustrate acts of everyday community and solidarity, from the found photographs depicting Sikhs alongside Muslims to protestors surrounding and blocking an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields.
Kaur’s work, in this sense, demonstrates the best of what the Turner Prize can do: at first glance impenetrably conceptual, but upon closer inspection - and despite knee-jerk headlines - warmly welcoming. It sits alongside previous works, including Tracey Emin’s much-maligned, headline-grabbing My Bed. Long held up as an easy punchline on the apparent vapidity of the prize (and arguably remembered more than Steve McQueen’s winning entry from the same year), the passage of time has been kind to My Bed, now widely regarded as a suitably harrowing depiction of struggles with addiction and mental health issues. Crucially, the unfolding career of Emin since her nomination has contextualised the piece in her wider body of work, with subsequent exhibitions and retrospectives cementing her, to echo Grayson Perry, as a ‘fully paid-up member of the art establishment’.
It’s tempting to suggest that the Turner Prize has ‘grown up’ in the years approaching its fortieth anniversary. In reality, the changes we can observe over the prize’s four decades are less a change in the prize’s attitudes than they are in those of the UK as a whole. Dan Fox, writing for Frieze in 2007, acknowledged it as a barometer of “the mood of British culture” at the time. In the midst of the 90s’ ‘Cool Britannia’ culture, a more antagonistic approach is understandable - and exemplified by Tracey Emin responding to accusations that anyone could have made her work by with “Well, they didn't, did they?”. If this is the case, then Alter Altar serves as a perfect illustration of contemporary Britain as a true melting pot of cultures, seemingly discordant but, upon closer inspection beneath the surface, harmonious.
Turner Prize 2024 is showing at Tate Britain until 16th February 2025.
The Turner Prize has always straddled a strange line in the art world, simultaneously accused from different quarters of being either too ‘establishment’ or completely alienating to the general public. This year’s winning work by Jasleen Kaur, for example, has already been dismissed by certain outlets as nothing more than a Ford Escort covered by a doily, with no mention of the artist’s intent behind the work, or the powerful experience of witnessing the overwhelming, musical installation in-person. Conversely, given the ever-shifting nature of ‘contemporary’ art, today’s cutting-edge quickly becomes tomorrow’s pedestrian, as former prize-winner Grayson Perry reflects on in Playing to the Gallery, describing himself as “a fully paid-up member of the art establishment”.
Even the nineteenth-century painter J.M.W. Turner, who serves as the prize’s namesake, cannot escape this pattern. It is difficult to reconcile the works that now adorn the walls of the Royal Academy and the National Gallery with their description by a contemporary critic as “the product of a diseased eye and a reckless hand”. Just as Turner himself attracted controversy for his flouting of artistic convention, The Turner Prize has always delighted in spotlighting the young, radical ‘upstarts’ of contemporary art, from the attention-grabbing provocation of the YBA (Young British Artist) movement to the disruption of its own conventions in splitting the prize between all four nominees in 2019.
But, as the prize itself approaches middle age (it celebrated its 40th anniversary this year by returning to its traditional home at Tate Britain), is there a danger of its reputation overtaking it? This year’s winner, in a FAD Magazine article declaring “another win for meme culture”, was compared to the much-maligned Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million banana taped to a gallery wall. However, it feels wrong to dismiss Jasleen Kaur’s work as equally glib; while Sociomobile (the aforementioned red Ford Escort) may be the attention-grabbing centrepiece of the prize, it is contextualised by an entire exhibition, Alter Altar, which surrounds it.
First displayed at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2023, Alter Altar is a celebration not just of Kaur’s own twin cultures, but of the entire community of the Indian diaspora in Glasgow. It is simultaneously personal (the now famous Ford Escort was chosen as the first car the artist’s father owned in the UK) and community-focused. While the exhibition could have lost some of its potency in its migration down south to Tate Britain, its knowingly incongruent blend of cultures remains just as intriguing. Covered by frosted glass to recreate the perma-grey Glasgow skyline, signifiers from Irn-Bru to tapes of devotional qawwali music are all appropriated with equal importance. But beneath these surface-level details, in the exhibition as in life, photographs illustrate acts of everyday community and solidarity, from the found photographs depicting Sikhs alongside Muslims to protestors surrounding and blocking an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields.
Kaur’s work, in this sense, demonstrates the best of what the Turner Prize can do: at first glance impenetrably conceptual, but upon closer inspection - and despite knee-jerk headlines - warmly welcoming. It sits alongside previous works, including Tracey Emin’s much-maligned, headline-grabbing My Bed. Long held up as an easy punchline on the apparent vapidity of the prize (and arguably remembered more than Steve McQueen’s winning entry from the same year), the passage of time has been kind to My Bed, now widely regarded as a suitably harrowing depiction of struggles with addiction and mental health issues. Crucially, the unfolding career of Emin since her nomination has contextualised the piece in her wider body of work, with subsequent exhibitions and retrospectives cementing her, to echo Grayson Perry, as a ‘fully paid-up member of the art establishment’.
It’s tempting to suggest that the Turner Prize has ‘grown up’ in the years approaching its fortieth anniversary. In reality, the changes we can observe over the prize’s four decades are less a change in the prize’s attitudes than they are in those of the UK as a whole. Dan Fox, writing for Frieze in 2007, acknowledged it as a barometer of “the mood of British culture” at the time. In the midst of the 90s’ ‘Cool Britannia’ culture, a more antagonistic approach is understandable - and exemplified by Tracey Emin responding to accusations that anyone could have made her work by with “Well, they didn't, did they?”. If this is the case, then Alter Altar serves as a perfect illustration of contemporary Britain as a true melting pot of cultures, seemingly discordant but, upon closer inspection beneath the surface, harmonious.
Turner Prize 2024 is showing at Tate Britain until 16th February 2025.
