The Turner Prize shortlisted artists have been announced by Tate Britain. In competition for the UK’s most prestigious art award are Hurvin Anderson, Andrea Büttner, Lubaina Himid and Rosalind Nashashibi. All four artists will showcase their selected projects in the Turner Prize Exhibition 2017 at Ferens Art Gallery in Hull from 26 September. The prize, held annually and awarded to a practitioner born, living or working in Britain, recognises outstanding exhibitions or public presentations anywhere in the world from the previous year.
This year’s shortlisted artists hail from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, and their works promise to push the Turner Prize debate to the forefront of our minds once again. The winner of the 2017 Prize will be announced on 5 December at a special ceremony at Ferens Art Gallery and broadcast live on the BBC. This is the first time that the Turner Prize, which was established in 1984, has been exhibited in Hull, a location selected for the 2017 edition due to its status as UK City of Culture.
Shortlisted Artists:
Hurvin Anderson (b. 1965, Birmingham) is a British painter with parents of Jamaican origin. He has been selected for his solo exhibitions, Dub Versions at New Art Exchange in Nottingham and Backdrop at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Canada. The artist combines references from photographs and his own memories to create pieces of varying sizes that are compositionally dense and vibrant. Many of his works depict places where memory and history unite. This year’s jury praised Anderson as an outstanding British painter whose art speaks to our current political moment with questions about identity and belonging, and recognised a deeper interplay between figuration and abstraction in his work.
Andrea Büttner (b. 1972, Stuttgart) lives and works in London and Frankfurt am Main. The jury has chosen her for her solo exhibitions Gesamtzusammenhang at Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen in Switzerland and Andrea Büttner at David Kordansky in Los Angeles. The panel noted Büttner’s unique approach to collaboration and her exploration of religion, morality and ethics, articulated through a wide range of media including printmaking, sculpture, video and painting. Often incorporating archival material, Büttner’s exhibitions investigate shame, vulnerability and poverty. Using low media such as woodcuts or home videos, the artist is interested in the role of the amateur in the production of culture.
Lubaina Himid (b. 1954, Zanzibar) is Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire. She is part of the shortlist for projects including solo exhibitions Invisible Strategies at Modern Art Oxford and Navigation Charts at Spike Island in Bristol, as well as her participation in group exhibition The Place is Here at Nottingham Contemporary. The jury praised these exhibitions for addressing pertinent questions of personal and political identity. As a key figure of the Black Arts Movement, Himid has foregrounded the contribution of African diaspora to Western culture and works across painting, installation, drawing and printmaking.
Rosalind Nashashibi (b. 1973, Croydon) is a Palestinian-English artist based in Liverpool. She joins the Turner Prize line-up following her solo exhibition On This Island at The University Art Galleries at UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts in California, and her participation in Documenta 14. The jury was impressed by the depth and maturity of Nashashibi’s work, which often examines sites of human occupation and the coded relationships that occur within those spaces – whether a family home or garden, a ship or the Gaza Strip. Her films use the camera as an eye to observe moments and events.
The Turner Prize award is £40,000 with £25,000 going to the winner and £5,000 each for the other shortlisted artists. The members of the Turner Prize 2017 jury are Dan Fox, writer and co-Editor at Frieze; Martin Herbert, art critic; Mason Leaver-Yap, Walker Art Center’s Bentson Scholar of Moving Image and Associate Curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin; and Emily Pethick, Director of Showroom. The jury is chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain.
The Turner Prize 2017 Exhibition, 26 September 2017 – 7 January 2018, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull.
Find out more: www.tate.org.uk.
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Credits
1. Rosalind Nashashibi, Electrical Gaza, 2015, video still. On This Island: Rosalind Nashashibi, The University Art Galleries at UC Irvine’s Clare Trever School of the Arts in California 2015. Courtesy of the artist.
