Brian Haws even...... going mad today
Wallinger Heads Turner Prize Shortlist of Four British Artists
By Martin Gayford
May 8 (Bloomberg) -- Mark Wallinger, whose anti-war protest installation is on show at Tate Britain, was selected for the shortlist of four artists announced today for the Turner Prize.
Mike Nelson, Zarina Bhimji and Nathan Coley are also on the 2007 list for the award, given to the best British artist under 50 years old for an exhibition in the previous year, said the organizers.
Wallinger, one of the major figures of Britart in the 1990s, is the most celebrated and senior of those on the shortlist. Born in 1959, he is only a couple of years off the chronological cut- off point. He has already received one of the other glittering prizes of the British art world, having represented Britain at the 2001 Venice Biennale.
His Tate Britain installation, punningly entitled ``State Britain,'' is an exact reproduction of Brian Haw's marathon anti- war protest in London's Parliament Square. Wallinger's work takes a myriad of forms, including painting, sculpture, video and installation.
Wallinger's preoccupations with the British class system and the afterlife run through his work. He can either be seen as one of the most intellectually stimulating artists at work today, or as unbearably pretentious. Either way, Wallinger is probably the favorite. His anti-war position adds an edge to the competition.
Wallinger was shortlisted in 1995. This is also the second Turner Prize appearance for Mike Nelson, an installation artist born in 1967. He was widely tipped to be the winner in 2001. A remarkable work of his was shown at that year's Venice Biennale: a mysterious labyrinth of empty rooms installed in a disused brewery on the Giudecca.
Second Appearance
The visitor wandered through, among other spaces, a bar, possibly from an American motel, a bedroom containing only a mattress where there none the less lingered a strong sense that something horrible might have happened, and a Muslim prayer hall.
This piece was the talk of that Biennale, more so than Wallinger's official show. Nelson's contribution to the Turner Prize Exhibition failed to make such an impression, and he didn't win. Featuring twice on the shortlist is no guarantee of winning, though Nelson must be considered a strong contender.
Zarina Bhimji is a photographer, installation artist and film maker. She was born in Uganda in 1963 to an Asian family who were subsequently forced out of the country by the dictator Idi Amin after spending two years in hiding.
Her work has dealt with a number of subjects, including body parts that she discovered at Charing Cross Hospital. Her film about returning to Uganda, ``Out of the Blue,'' has a landscape lyricism which actually recalls Turner, an unusual quality for Turner Prize short-listed artists.
Capricious Juries
Lastly, Nathan Coley, born in 1967, makes work including photography, video and sculptures. Coley focuses on such subjects as the featureless and bland homes on modern housing estates.
Coley and Bhimji are less well-known than the other two, though experience teaches that in the Turner Prize favorites often don't win and outsiders often do. The juries, made up of contemporary art curators and art writers, are often capricious.
The 2007 Turner Prize exhibition and award ceremony will be staged at the Tate Liverpool, outside London for the first time since the award was set up in 1984. Tate Director Nicholas Serota will not chair the jury as usual and will be replaced by Christoph Grunenberg, director of Tate Liverpool. The event has been moved as a curtain-raiser for Liverpool European Capital of Culture in 2008, according to an e-mailed release from the Tate.
We shall see how many London art lovers make that trek to Liverpool.
The Turner Prize Show runs from Oct. 19, 2007, to Jan. 13, 2008. The exhibition is supported by Arts Council England and Liverpool Culture Company.