Artist who covered sports car with giant doily nominated for Turner Prize

April 24, 2024

A Glasgow-born artist who covered a red sports car with a giant ornamental doily mat is among the nominees for the 2024 Turner Prize.

Jasleen Kaur is on a "fantastic shortlist of artists" which also includes Manilla-born Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson from Manchester, and Worthing-born Delaine Le Bas.

The Turner Prize jury said the nominees showed "British artistic talent is as rich and vibrant as ever".

The artists are competing for £25,000, while those shortlisted will be awarded £10,000.

An exhibition of the shortlisted work will be held at Tate Britain from 25 September to 16 February 2025, as the prestigious art event returns to London's Tate Britain for the first time in six years.

The winner will be announced on 3 December.

Kaur, 37, who lives in London, is on the list for Alter Altar at Tramway, Glasgow, which was aimed at showcasing her growing up in the Scottish city's Sikh community.

The exhibition used family photos, an Axminster carpet, a vintage Ford Escort, Irn-Bru and kinetic hand bells.

Rosie Cooper, director of Wysing Arts Centre, who sits on the judging panel, said Kaur sees the vehicle as a "representation of her dad's first car and his migrant desires" and it "blasted snippets of uplifting pop songs referencing freedom and liberation throughout the space".

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Abad's solo exhibition To Those Sitting In Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford includes drawings, etchings and sculptures which have been combined to "ask questions of museums", according to the jury.

The 40-year-old, who works in London, reflects on colonial history and growing up in the Philippines where his parents struggled against authoritarianism.

Le Bas's Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning at Secession art institute in Vienna saw painted fabrics hung, with theatrical costumes and sculptures also part of the exhibit.

The 58-year-old artist was inspired by the death of her grandmother and the history of the Roma people.

The jury said they "were impressed by the energy and immediacy present in this exhibition, and its powerful expression of making art in a time of chaos".

Johnson, 65, has been given the nod for her solo exhibition Presence at The Courtauld Gallery in London, and Drawn Out at Ortuzar Projects, New York.

She uses portraits of black women and men in a combination of pastels, gouache and watercolour and was praised by the judges for her "sensitive and dramatic use of line, colour, space and scale to express empathy and intimacy with her subjects".

Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain and chairman of the Turner Prize jury, said: "All four of them make work that is full of life.

"They show how contemporary art can fascinate, surprise and move us, and how it can speak powerfully of complex identities and memories, often through the subtlest of details.

"In the Turner Prize's 40th year, this shortlist proves that British artistic talent is as rich and vibrant as ever."

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