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Turner Prize 2008

Four Artists Compete for Prestigious Award on Show at Tate Britain

Nov 12, 2008 Shona Black

The nomination works of Turner Prize 2008 finalists Runa Islam, Mark Leckey, Goshka Macuga and Cathy Wilkes are on exhibit at the Tate Britain through January 2009.

The prestigious £25,000 prize has been awarded annually since 1984 to a young artist living or working in Britain for his or her outstanding contribution to the development of contemporary art in the UK.

The Turner Prize can famously be controversial, with the four finalists chosen by jury each year for exhibition at the Tate Britain often raising heightened public debate over the role of contemporary art in society and indeed the nature of art itself.

Turner Prize Controversy

Previous Turner Prize finalists to have stirred up a storm of controversy have included Tracey Emin for her “unmade bed” (My Bed, 1998); Chris Ofili with his use of elephant dung (No Woman, No Cry, 1998); Damien Hirst and his formaldehyde “animal sculptures” (Mother and Child, Divided, 1993); and Marcus Harvey’s notorious serial-killer portrait (Myra, 1997). While the artists chosen for the 2008 shortlist offer up less shock value than many of their predecessors, they cover a wide spectrum of challenging contemporary themes, conventions and media, as well as divergent backgrounds.

Turner 2008 Shortlist

Film artist Runa Islam, born in Bangladesh and raised in England, presents two works from her 2007 Centre of Gravity show in Norway, Be the First to See what You See when You See It and First Day of Spring, plus the 2007 work CINEMATOGRAPHY, a piece that sets out to neutralise the artist’s own aesthetic judgment by setting the camera filming along a prescribed route strictly administered by motion-control robot. With the camera tracing the word ‘cinematography’, CINEMATOGRAPHY explores the use of film as a dual visual and narrative medium.

Polish-born Goshka Macuga’s nomination works for the Turner take as inspiration the professional and romantic relationships between artists Paul Nash and Eileen Agar, and Lilly Reich and Mies van der Rohe. Photomontage and sculpture reference the couples in Macuga’s Berlin Biennial installations Haus der Frau I and Haus der Frau II (2008), addressing issues of archiving and museum display, and merging recreation with interpretation, homage with invention.

Glasgow-based installation artist Cathy Wilkes is nominated for her solo exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery, including the complex assemblage of readymades, mannequins and objects Selective Memory: Scotland and Venice (2005). Wilkes’ room-sized installations often read as an unhappy dissection of the everyday.

The only man in the group, multi-disciplinarian film and popular culture enthusiast Mark Leckey has been tipped by bookmakers to win this year’s prize, for two solo exhibitions: Industrial Light & Magic at Le Consortium, Dijon, and Resident at Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne.

The winner of the 2008 Turner Prize will be announced 1 December 2008. The Tate Britain Turner Prize 2008 exhibition will be on display in London through 18 January 2009.

The copyright of the article Turner Prize 2008 in Art Galleries/Museums is owned by Shona Black. Permission to republish Turner Prize 2008 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.