2008 Turner Prize

The 2008 Turner Prize nominees' exhibition was at Tate Britain, London

The 2008 Turner Prize was awarded on 1 December 2008 to Mark Leckey. The £25,000 Turner Prize is awarded by the Tate to one of four nominees and is based on their work in the previous year. The other three 2008 nominees were Runa Islam, Goshka Macuga and Cathy Wilkes; for the first time since 1998, there were three female nominees. The chairman of the jury was Stephen Deuchar, director of Tate Britain. The artwork shown by the nominees at the invitational exhibition was generally unpopular with critics.

Nicholas Serota made a short speech before the award was presented by Nick Cave. Leckey had not prepared an acceptance speech. In an interview with Channel 4 News directly following the announcement, Leckey said, "The critics like middlebrow art. I don't make middlebrow art. Sod them. If you are working as an artist nowadays, the worse place to be, in terms of critics, is Britain."[1]

Exhibition

An exhibition of work by the nominees was shown at Tate Britain from 30 September 2008 to 18 January 2009. The curator was Carolyn Kerr.[2]

The Turner Prize is awarded for a show by the artist in the previous year.[3] When nominees are told of their nomination, they then prepare exhibits for the Turner Prize exhibition, often at short notice.[3] As such, the Turner Prize exhibition may not feature the works for which the artist was initially nominated by the judges.[3] However, it tends to be the basis on which public and press judge the artist's worthiness for nomination.[3]

Nominees

There were four nominees for the prize:

It was the first time since 1998 that three of the four nominees had been women.[7]

Stephen Deuchar, who chaired the jury, said: "The prize is not there to award the most competent artist at work today, but to draw attention to what the jury considers new developments." [8]

Works and press coverage

Runa Islam

Runa Islam's exhibited works were three films:

Artist's comment:

The critics said:

Mark Leckey

Mark Leckey's exhibited works were:

The critics said:

Goshka Macuga

Goshka Macuga's exhibited works were:

Macuga's works incorporated photographs by surrealist Paul Nash and drawings by his mistress Eileen Agar. There were also sculptures utilising work by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich made in glass and steel.[2][8][10]

The critics said:

Cathy Wilkes

Cathy Wilkes' exhibited work was:

The critics said:

Critics' reception of the exhibition as a whole

Coverage was mostly negative. Richard Dorment wrote in The Daily Telegraph: "The shortlist for this year's Turner Prize is so wilfully opaque it's irrelevant." In his opinion the artists selected exemplified "Euro-art, a term I've made up to describe a certain kind of technically competent, bland, and ultimately empty art made specifically for international biennales."[10] Similarly, Jonathan Jones wrote in The Guardian that the show "reflect[ed] a mentality only too dominant in art magazines and curating right now—a rather overthought, overtalked, pseudo-intellectual culture."[16] In The Times, Rachel Campbell-Johnston wrote, "I can't help thinking that this show will prove ... like the returns desk of Ikea on a Monday morning. Lots of frustrated people will be left staring at a pile of inscrutable junk."[14] In the Financial Times, Jackie Wullschlager wrote, "Don’t go. Don’t even think about going. This year’s Turner Prize exhibition is without competition the worst in the history of the award.... a killer mix of self-indulgence and academicism."[15] Laura Cumming in The Observer agreed, "If ever you were thinking of giving the Turner Prize a miss then 2008 is the ideal year." saying that "[i]t is not that the art is wilfully bad ... it is just that it is almost entirely inactive."[17] In contrast, Adrian Searle wrote in The Guardian: "[T]here's a depth and complexity [in the Turner exhibition] that, it would be nice to think, might overtake the usual chat about winners and losers."[6]

Outside the exhibition, the Stuckists art group handed out leaflets with the message "The Turner Prize is Crap", to protest the lack of figurative painting.[2][8]

Notes and references

  1. ↑ "Doh! Felix and Homer take the Turner Prize", Daily Mail, 2 December 2008 (Online at Highbeam, subscription required).
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Arifa Akbar, "A mannequin on a toilet and dry porridge—it's the Turner Prize", The Independent, 30 September 2008 (online at Highbeam, subscription required).
  3. 1 2 3 4 Lynn Barber, "How I suffered for art's sake", The Observer, Art and Design, The Guardian, 30 September 2006.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Channel 4 News - Turner nominees announced (broken link)
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Britain's Biggest Art Prize", The Kathmandu Post, 3 February 2009, (online at Highbeam, subscription required).
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Adrian Searle, "Nurses and curses", The Guardian, 30 September 2008, archived 3 October 2008
  7. ↑ "Shortlist for Turner Prize dominated by women", Hindustan Times, 14 May 2008 (online at Highbeam, subscription required).
  8. 1 2 3 Rod Nordland, "You Call That Art? Britain's Turner Prize does, and makes no apologies for it. Just don't touch that garbage on the floor", Newsweek, 3 October 2008, at The Daily Beast, archived 7 October 2008
  9. 1 2 3 4 Mark Brown, "Makes you think? Turner prize show opens", The Guardian, 29 September 2008, archived 3 October 2008.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Richard Dorment, "The Turner Prize 2008: who cares who wins?", The Daily Telegraph, 29 September 2008, archived 3 October 2008
  11. ↑ Still images at White Cube website
  12. ↑ Still images at White Cube website
  13. 1 2 3 Milovan Farronato, "Interview: Runa Islam", ART iT 16, Summer/Fall 2007.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 Rachel Campbell-Johnston, "Turner Prize: don't scream, it doesn't mean anything at all", The Times, 30 September 2008 (subscription required).
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 Jackie Wullschlager, "Turner fight begins again", Financial Times, 29 September 2008 (subscription required), partially archived 16 October 2008.
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 Jonathan Jones, "What has gone wrong with the Turner prize? In a shortlist made up of pseudo-intellectual flotsam only one Turner prize nominee succeeds in making art of genuine worth", Jonathan Jones on Art blog, The Guardian, 7 October 2008, archived 12 October 2008.
  17. 1 2 3 4 Laura Cumming, "Sshh... it's the Turner Prize: With not a single shocker to keep the tabloids busy, this year's theory-laden show is a bit, well ... quiet. Could it be one to miss?", The Observer, The Guardian, 4 October 2008, archived 8 October 2008.
  18. ↑ Toulouse Le Plot, "Arty farty", The Sun, 30 September 2008.

External links

Online slideshows
Online video coverage
Audio
Press coverage
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