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An exhibition featuring the works of the four artists shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2016 opens at Tate Britain today
Michael Dean, Anthea Hamilton, Helen Marten and Josephine Pryde are in the running for one of the visual art world's most prestigious prizes
A gigantic bare bottom and a train to nowhere are among the quirky works that go on public display in the UK today as Tate Britain opens an exhibition featuring the four artists shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize.
Michael Dean, Anthea Hamilton, Helen Marten and Josephine Pryde are in the running for one of the visual art world’s most prestigious prizes, which is awarded each year by Tate Britain to a contemporary visual artist from the UK.
The aim of the prize is to “promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art,” according to the gallery.
Photos and poetic puzzles
The exhibition includes a wide range of thought-provoking art, from London artist Anthea Hamilton’s enormous yet oddly beguiling male bottom that was first shown in her Lichen! Libido! (London!) Chastity! exhibition at SculptureCenter, New York, to Helen Marten’s intricate pieces that weave together everyday objects and images to “create poetic, pictorial puzzles,” as described by the Tate.
Newcastle artist Michael Dean has been nominated for his “Sic Glyphs” sculptures and installations that were first shown in London and Amsterdam and which combine “instantly recognizable” materials like salvaged corrugated metal sand and soil into powerful human-scale art forms. His work includes a sculpture – “United Kingdom poverty line for two adults and two children” – which features a pile of pennies that is one coin less than the UK poverty line for a family of four.
Josephine Pryde’s photography and installation from her “lapses in Thinking by the person i Am” exhibition, which was shown at CCA Wattis in San Francisco, as well as new pieces she created for the exhibition, place “as much importance on the staging of the work as the images themselves,” according to the museum.
The Turner Prize was established in 1984 and is awarded each year to a British artist under 50 years of age for work that was displayed or exhibited in the twelve months prior to 28 April 2016.
Previous Turner Prize winners include Gillian Wearing OBE (1997), Damien Hirst (1995) and Rachel Whiteread (1993).
This year’s winner, who is awarded ￡25,000 ($32,500), will be announced on 5 December, 2016. Each of the other shortlisted artists receive ￡5,000 ($6,500).
The final Turner Prize 2016 winner will be decided by a jury that includes Michelle Cotton, director of the Bonner Kunstverein gallery in Bonn, Germany; curator Tamsin Dillon; Beatrix Ruf, director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Hepworth Wakefield, director of the Hepworth Wakefield gallery in Yorkshire, England.
The jury is chaired by the director of Tate Britain, Alex Farquharson.
The Turner Prize 2016 exhibition opens daily from 27 September 2016 until 2 January 2017 at Tate Britain, Millbank, London, England.