Forensic Architecture, Naeem Mohaiemen, Charlotte Prodger and Luke Willis Thompson are the four contenders for this year’s Turner Prize it was announced today.
Forensic Architecture, a collective of architects, researchers and filmmakers based at Goldsmiths College in London, whose work visualises evidence relating to human rights abuses globally, are nominated for their exhibitions at the ICA, London, MACBA Barcelona and MUAC Mexico. Through his research-led films Mohaiemen, born in London but based in Dakar and New York, and whose work was shown in both the Athens and Kassel iterations of Documenta, as well as being the subject of a solo show at MoMA PS1 in New York, reflects on history and the place of the individual within global narratives. Prodger, a Glasgow-based video artist whose work deals with identity and place, is on the list for her solo exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall. London-based New Zealander Willis Thompson is included for his show at the Chisenhale, London, in which he exhibited a filmic portrait, black and white and silent, of Diamond Reynolds, the girlfriend of Philando Castile, who was killed by Minnesota police in 2016.
The moving image-heavy shortlist was compiled by a jury featuring Elena Filipovic, director of Kunsthalle Basel; Lisa Le Feuvre, executive director of the Holt-Smithson Foundation; Tom McCarthy, novelist and visiting professor, Royal College of Art; and ArtReview‘s international editor Oliver Basciano.
Each artist receives £5,000, with the eventual winner, which will be announced in December, receiving an additional £25,000. The prize is open to British-born or -based artists. In 2017 the upper age limit of 50 was removed, though, at 49, Mohaiemen is the oldest artist in contention this year.
Tate also announced the jury for the 2019 prize as Alessio Antoniolli, director, Gasworks, London; Elvira Dyangani Ose, senior curator at Creative Time, New York, and lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, London; the writer Charlie Porter and Victoria Pomery, director of Turner Contemporary in Margate, which will also stage the shortlist exhibition.
An exhibition of the 2018 shortlist opens at Tate Britain on 25 September.
26 April 2018
