Turner Prize 2014 Shortlist Announced

The four artists nominated for the Turner Prize 2014 have now been announced. Those shortlisted for the award are: Duncan Campbell, Ciara Phillips, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell. Founded in 1984, this year marks the 30th year of the Turner Prize. The competition was launched to promote discussion of new developments in contemporary British art. The variety of media used by the four shortlisted artists this year reflects the diversity of work being made in the UK today, often exhibited globally, from film and video to performance, collaborative working and installation. The art within the shortlist includes work that manipulates and appropriates found film footage and online imagery, reflecting the impact of the internet, cinema, TV and mobile technologies

The Turner Prize 2014 exhibition takes place at Tate Britain from 30 September to 4 January 2015. The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony, broadcast live on Channel 4 on Monday 1 December. The award is £40,000 with £25,000 going to the winner and £5,000 each for the other shortlisted artists. The Prize is awarded to a British artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding 17 April 2014. Read on to find out more about the nominated artists.

Duncan Campbell (b. 1972)
Campbell is nominated for his presentation It for Others in Scotland + Venice at the 55th Venice Biennale. Campbell’s engaging films often take provocative individuals as their subject, weaving together fact and fiction to create portraits that question the authority and means through which history is presented. Responding to Chris Marker and Alan Resnais’ 1953 film Statues Also Die, Campbell’s It for Others combines archive footage and new material, including a new dance work by choreographer Michael Clark.

Ciara Phillips (b. 1976)
Phillips is nominated for her solo exhibition at The Showroom, London. Phillips works with print in the broadest sense producing screenprints, textiles, photographs and wall paintings as site-specific installations. She often works collaboratively, transforming the gallery into a workshop and involving other artists, designers and local community groups. Phillips has taken inspiration from Corita Kent (1918-1986), a pioneering artist, educator and activist who reinterpreted the advertising slogans and imagery of 1960s consumer culture.

James Richards (b. 1983)
Richards is nominated for his contribution to The Encyclopaedic Palace at the 55th Venice Biennale. In his videos and installations Richards brings together a disparate range of found and original material to create poetic meditations on the pleasure, sensuality and the voyeurism that is within the act of looking. Found VHS video and new imagery undergo varying levels of manipulation and repetition and, with an accompanying soundtrack, heighten the emotional and psychological range of the original.

Tris Vonna-Michell (b. 1982)
Vonna- Michell is nominated for his solo exhibition Postscript II (Berlin) at Jan Mot, Brussels. Through fast paced spoken word live performances and recordings, Vonna-Michell creates circuitous, multilayered narratives. Accompanied by installations providing a visual script in the form of slide projections, photocopies and other ephemera, Vonna-Michell’s works are characterised by fragments of information, detours and repetitions designed to confuse and enlighten in equal measure.

Credits
1. And More by Ciara Phillips, one of the shortlisted artists for the Turner prize 2014. Photograph: Michael Wolchover.