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2008 Turner Prize

2008 Turner Prize: “

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This article is about the 2008 [[Turner Prize]] for art.

There are four nominees for the prize:

* [[Runa Islam]]
** Bangladesh born, aged 37 [1], trained both at the [[Rijksakademie]] in [[Amsterdam]] and the [[Royal College of Art]].
* [[Mark Leckey]]
** from London, age 44 [1] currently a [[film studies]] professor in [[Germany]] at the [[Städelschule]] in [[Frankfurt]] [4].
* [[Goshka Macuga]]
** Polish, age 41 [1], describes herself as a ‘cultural anthropologist’. Her work featured in the 5th [[Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art]][3].
* [[Cathy Wilkes]]
** from Glasgow, aged 42 [1].

It is the first time in a decade that three of the four nominees for the £25,000 award have been women [3]. The winner of the prize will be announced on December 1 2008 and the announcement will be broadcast live on [[Channel 4]]

==Turner Prize Exhibition==
An exhibition of work by the nominees is shown at [[Tate Britain]] from September 30 2008 to January 18 2009. The curator is Carolyn Kerr [1].

===Works and press coverage===

Runa Islam’s works include:

*”First Day of Spring”[7]
**A film shot in [[Dhaka]], [[Bangladesh]] where Islam was born. It shows a group of [[rickshaw]] drivers taking a rest beside a deserted avenue on the first day of spring [3][4].
*”Cinematography”[7]
**A film shot using a mechanically controlled camera programmed, in its movement, to spell out the word ‘CINEMATOGRAPHY’. The footage is of a film apparatus workshop used by JC Harry Harrison (a motion-control pioneer) in [[New Zealand]] involved in the making of [[The Lord of the Rings (movie)]][7]. The camera moves around the location filming hardware and shelving to the sound of motor noises.
*”Be The First To see What You see As You see It”[3]
**A film showing a dreamlike sequence of a well dressed woman approaching items of crockery placed on plinths and then knocking or throwing the crockery to the floor [3][4][7].

—-
[Her film is] ‘torture’ [2]

This art is academic because it was made not to communicate but to be explained. It exists solely to give lecturers and gallery guides a reason to get up in the morning. [2]

Leckey
——
Bio
describes himself as ‘slightly obsessed with Felix the

Cat’ [‘graph gallery]

—-

Title: Industrial Light & Magic
Title: Felix gets Broadcasted
Title: Made in ‘Eaven

* work – ‘drew on his career-long fascination with

Felix the Cat and Jeff Koons’ rabbit to create videos

and sculptures of animals. A key part of his entry is

a lecture, entitled Cinema-in-the-Round, which

features a voiceover by Leckey and an episode of The

Simpsons in which Homer registers his horror as he

turns into a three-dimensional being.’ [1]

a filmed performance in the form of a lecture by the

artist about why he finds certain works of

contemporary art effective [2]

a film featuring Homer Simpson. A forty minute art

lecture by Leckey, has been recorded for ‘Cinema-in

the- Round.’ [3]

A 40-minute film of a lecture given at Tate Modern and

the Guggenheim museum in New York dominates Mark

Leckey’s show. Leckey, suave in evening dress,

delivers his peroration on images and objects, on

Philip Guston’s ‘thick-as-a-brick’ paintings, on

deformed feet in Georg Baselitz, on cats, on James

Cameron’s movie Titanic, on Marx’s ‘All that is solid

melts into air’, and a great deal more. [4]

—-
it was gratifying to see that even members of the live

audience were talking and getting up to leave. [2]

Macuga
——
—-

Piece title ‘Deutsches Volk-Deutsche Arbeit’ [‘graph

gallery]

‘House der Frau 2’ [5]

‘Haus Der Frau 1’

‘Different Sky (Rain)’

* work – ‘has remade two large glass and steel

sculptures originally created by German architects

Lilly Reich and Mies van der Rohe for one part of her

entry, and has made collages from works by the artists

Paul Nash and Eileen Agar.’ [1]

tubular steel backed with glass [2]

glass, steel and fabric sculptures exploring two

relationships where the woman is the lesser-known

partner [3]

Macuga’s installations invariably quote and even

include the works of earlier artists. She appropriates

them in order to tell her own stories, as well as

theirs. [4]

derived from exhibition display stands designed by

Reich [4]
—-

‘sterile work’ [2]

rather beautiful…oddly moving [4]

has turned the scrap of previous exhibits into, er,

different scrap [6]

Wilkes
——
Bio
* from Glasgow, aged 42 [1]

—-

Title: I Give You All My Money

* Work – ‘has created a sprawling installation

comprised of a supermarket checkout with remnants of

salad and dried porridge left in bowls by her young

son and daughter, as well as a baby buggy and a naked

mannequin on a toilet seat.’ [1]

Cathy Wilkes’s installation consists of two

supermarket check-out counters covered with used

cereal bowls, spoons and cups still encrusted with her

own child’s food and juice. A female mannequin

surrealistically festooned with various emblems of

Woman’s Sad Lot – a nurse’s cap, a teacup – sits on a

lavatory. Another mannequin, standing near a pram, has

a birdcage on her head to signify her status a trapped

and defenceless creature. [2]

a new sculpture made using items from her home […]

It depicts a supermarket checkout adorned with empty

breakfast bowls alongside a mannequin sitting on a

toilet. [3]

A shop mannequin sits on a lavatory, cross-legged,

elegant and naked, but for her nurse’s hat and lots of

things draped and dangling from her head – rusty

horseshoes, a cup, charred bits of wood, a seashell, a

deflated balloon […] A second mannequin leans

against one of two full-size supermarket checkout

counters. Ash is smeared on her face; her head is

enclosed in a birdcage. [4]

—-

‘Wilkes is using a surrealistic vocabulary that was

out of date in 1940, or that her take on feminism is

one that that Betty Friedan would have recognised 40

years ago.’ [2]

Wilkes’ art is a poke in the eye, a sort of curse. She

goes on and on doing the same thing, and her

insistence is telling and painful. [4]
—-
Wilkes tells us that it ‘apprehends an end point in

our understanding of things as they are – a point at

which words become insufficient, and the naming of

objects is disconnected from our experience of them.’

[2]

Other
—–
Outside the gallery, the Stuckists art group handed

out leaflets with the message ‘The Turner Prize is

Crap’, in their continuing protest at the Tate’s

sidelining of figurative painting. [1]

Quotes of whole short list
————————–
* The shortlist for this year’s Turner Prize is so

wilfully opaque it’s irrelevant. [2]

there’s a depth and complexity [in the Turner

exhibition] that, it would be nice to think, might

overtake the usual chat about winners and losers. [4]

External links
————–
Telegraph Gallery
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknew

s/3103290/Turner-Prize-nominations-at-Tate-

Britain.html

Daily Mirror Gallery
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-

stories/2008/09/29/pictures-this-year-s-turner-prize-

entries-115875-20760327/

Guardian Gallery
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2008/se

p/29/turner.prize.tate?picture=338081966

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-

entertainment/art-and-architecture/news/a-mannequin-

on-a-toilet-and-dry-porridge-ndash-its-the-turner-

prize-945945.html

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?

xml=/arts/2008/09/29/baturnerrd129.xml

[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?

xml=/arts/2008/09/29/baturner129.xml

[4]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/sep/30/tur

nerprize.art1

[5]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts_and_cult

ure/7641623.stm

[6]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article17480

39.ece

[7]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/sep/30/tur

nerprize.art

(Via Wikipedia – New pages [en].)

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