Turner Prize 2019 awarded to all-four nominees

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani were collectively awarded the Turner Prize 2019 at a ceremony held in Margate, on Tuesday 3 December.

Using “the occasion of the Turner Prize to make a strong statement of community and solidarity” the four nominees “formed themselves into a collective” said Vogue magazine editor Edward Enninful.

After the winners announcement, Helen Cammock read a compelling statement jointly written by the artists:
“This year the jury have selected a group of artists who are all engaged in forms of social or participatory practice. We believe when grouped together, such practices become incompatible with the competition format, whose tendency is to divide and to individualise…
The Turner Prize is given to a British artist or artist working in Britain. This year, as it has often done in the past, the prize has sought to expand what it means to be British. We find it significant in an era marked by the rise of the right and the renewal of fascism in an era of the Conservatives’ hostile environment, that has paradoxically made each of us and many of our friends and family again increasingly unwelcome in Britain….
When there is already so much that divides people, we feel strongly motivated to use the occasion of the prize to make a collective statement in the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity, in art as in society.”

The artists will share the £40,000 award.

The members of the Turner Prize 2019 jury are Alessio Antoniolli, Director, Gasworks & Triangle Network; Elvira Dyangani Ose, Director, The Showroom Gallery and Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths; Victoria Pomery, Director, Turner Contemporary; and Charlie Porter, writer. The jury is chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain.

The TURNER PRIZE 2019 exhibition continues to 12 January 2020

Turner Contemporary
Rendezvous
Margate CT9 1HG
United Kingdom
www.turnercontemporary.org

Image: Tai Shani, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Oscar Murillo.
Source: The Guardian – Gareth Fuller/PA