Helen Marten has been awarded the inaugural The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture. The £30,000 prize, established to mark the fifth anniversary of The Hepworth Wakefield gallery in Yorkshire, is given to a British or UK-based artist, of any age, in recognition of a significant contribution to the development of contemporary sculpture.
In an acknowledgement that all art prizes were to some extent flawed, Marten announced that she would be sharing the prize with her fellow nominees – Phyllida Barlow, Steven Claydon and David Medalla. A similar gesture was made by artist Theaster Gates last year on being awarded the sixth Artes Mundi prize.
Marten is also up for this year’s Turner Prize, to be announced on 5 December. Whether this trend for prize-splitting continues, whoever wins that award, remains to be seen.
Work by all four shortlisted artists can be seen at The Hepworth Wakefield until 19 February 2017.
18 November 2016
