Tate announces full shortlist for Turner Prize
Ahead of the opening of the Turner Prize exhibition later this year at Tate Britain, the full shortlist has been announced for the coveted art prize.
The gallery is set to open at the prestigious London venue on September 25th, and will conclude on February 16th, 2025. In addition to receiving nationwide acclaim, the winner of the 40th annual event will also be given a £25,000 prize at the ceremony, which is scheduled to take place on December 3rd at Tate Britain. Meanwhile, the runner-up artists will be handed £10,000.
Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain and chair of the Turner Prize jury has spoken about the importance of artworks showcasing identity, which has been highlighted in the 2024 selections.
Farquharson remarked: “This year’s shortlisted artists can be broadly characterised as exploring questions of identity, autobiography, community and the self in relation to memory, or history or myth.”
Notably, Filipino artist Pio Abad is nominated for To Those Sitting in Darkness, which was originally shown in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and explores cultural artefacts linked to the city.
Explaining the piece in further detail, juror Sam Thorne, the director and CEO of Japan House London, stated, “Its very much investigating museum histories, institutional histories, political histories, and Abad views the exhibition as an ‘act of illumination that puts unexamined histories on display and addresses objects that have been confined to the margins of telling'”.
Thorne also stated he was “particularly impressed by the depth and the range of the Ashmolean exhibition, by its precision, its elegance, and its blending of scholarship, draughtsmanship, collaboration, and curation.”
Meanwhile, Claudette Johnson is nominated for Presence at the Courtauld Gallery in London and also Drawn Out, which she brought to life at Ortuzar Projects in New York. Johnson’s work explores the experience of Black women, and has made a globally-respected figure in the art world.
Thorne said of her work: “The figures, typically identified from the titles as friends, look directly at the viewer, recreating an intimate encounter with the artist. Johnson invests these pictures with a palpable sense of conviviality and vulnerability.”
Scottish artist Jasleen Kaur is shortlisted for her solo exhibition Alter Altar at Tramway in Glasgow, which looks at the Sikh community’s relationship with the city. In a statement, Tate said “the jury praised the artist’s evocative combination of sound and sculpture to address specifics of family memory and community struggle”.
The list of nominees is rounded out by Worthing-born Delaine Le Bas for Incipit Vita Nova. Here Beings the New Life/A New Life is Beginning, which was shown at Secession in Vienna. Prize judge Rosie Cooper praised the exhibition and described it as a “beautifully articulated visual language”
