thu 28/03/2024

Turner Prize

When Forms Come Alive, Hayward Gallery review - how to reduce good art to family fun

Under the guidance of director Ralph Rugoff, the Hayward Gallery seems hell bent on reducing art to the level of fun for all the family. And as though to prove the point, cretinous captions strip the work of all meaning beyond the banal, while press...

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Jesse Darling: Virgins review - going straight

Self-described ‘intermittent poet’ and 2023 Turner Prize-nominee Jesse Darling said this in a recent interview for Art Review: ‘I think about modernity as a fairytale’. The comparison is made in reference to capitalism’s beginnings, as continuous as...

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Turner Prize 2023, Towner Eastbourne review - four contestants strike a sombre mood

It’s incredible to think that the Turner Prize has been going for nearly 40 years. It was initially set up to generate interest in contemporary art by sparking debate. Not surprisingly, the media took this as an invitation to stir up controversy by...

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Rachel Whiteread: Internal Objects, Gagosian Gallery review - apocalyptic sheds

Sheds have flourished in lockdown: they’ve always been places to escape to and in the past year, when spruced up as home offices, even more so. They’re also emblems of isolation. Poltergeist (main picture) and Doppelganger, the works that...

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Turner Prize 2016, Tate Britain

While the Turner Prize shortlist can reasonably be expected to provide some sense of British art now, the extent to which British art can or should attempt to reflect a view of British life is surely a moot point. Art that is socially or politically...

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Imagine… Antony Gormley: Being Human, BBC One

Metal figures on the foreshore of Crosby Beach, Liverpool, set against a sunset, signify the preoccupations of Antony Gormley. The sculptor has been concerned consistently with the human figure, manifested in metal – lead or iron – casts of his own...

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Turner Prize 2015, Tramway, Glasgow

What’s going on? It seems the Turner Prize judges not only ran out of Scots to nominate this year, but actual artists. The socially enterprising architect-design collective Assemble don’t even call themselves artists so what must they make of the...

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Grayson Perry: Provincial Punk, Turner Contemporary

Imagine if broadcasters thought the only living pop star worth giving air time to was Lady Gaga. Imagine – the horror. It would be wall-to-wall Gaga for the foreseeable future. And then imagine if the only living contemporary artist commissioning...

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Turner Prize 2014, Tate Britain

When did Big Ideas make a comeback at the Turner Prize? Did they ever go away? In its 30-year history it seems that everything that wasn’t painting has been labelled “conceptual art”. But we know that labels can be very misleading, and the “...

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Turner Prize 2013, Ebrington Barracks, Derry-Londonderry

This year, if you don’t live in Ireland, you’ll have to take a plane or a boat to see the Turner Prize exhibition. But the effort will be nicely rewarded, for Derry (or Londonderry/Doire – wherever your affiliations take you) is a beautiful city,...

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Turner Prize 2013 shortlist: Is David Shrigley an artist? and other thoughts

“Is David Shrigley an artist?,” a journalist asked at Tate Britain’s Turner Prize shortlist announcement this morning. Well, many would say so, though The Arts Desk critic Judith Flanders  had her own reservations after seeing his Hayward...

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Rachel Whiteread: Detached, Gagosian Gallery

When I visited Rachel Whiteread two years ago, there were two old sheds gathering dust in her basement as though waiting to be loved and put to use. Why was she cluttering up her studio with such large and intrusive objects, I wondered? “Things...

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