The Turner Art Prize Shortlist of four has been announced. I can barely contain myself.
The Turner Prize is awarded to a British artist under the age of fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months up to May 2007.
Here are the nominees;
i) Mark Wallinger - State Britain
'Mark has wittily recreated Brian Haw's Parliament Square protest in an installation at Tate Britain. The 40 metre long reconstruction of the flags and banners the government seized from anti war protester Brian Haw’s camp outside the Houses of Parliament speaks out not only against the war but against this appalling government. The destruction of the original protest materials by the police represented a blatant suppression of free speech and yet was allowed to happen with barely a peep of protest. By re-creating Haw’s camp in an art gallery Wallinger has made it live forever.'
Brilliant. Looks like a bunch of student demo banners to me but hey what do i know about art. Though if it is an 'exact recreation of Brian Haw's camp', then shouldn't Brian be nominated rather than this plagiarist?
ii) Zarina Bhimji - This Unhinged Her
Her work engages with emotions such as grief, pleasure, love and betrayal using non-narrative photography and film making...
This one reminds me of a piece of artwork my daughter proudly produced last week at Kindergarten. I searched desperately for a single redeeming feature, but no... It's a football net.
Judges said Coley's 'There Will Be No Miracles Here' referenced the ongoing conflict between religious and state authorities.
iv) Mike Nelson - Double Coop Displacement
Telegraph art critic, Richard Dorment, had this to say of Mike's seminal work,
Simply made out of a timber frame and chicken wire, it takes the form of a cube within a cube in tribute to Bruce Nauman's Double Steel Cage. But look out. The work is a trap. Inside Nelson's second cube are a series of small triangular spaces connected by a series of almost invisible "doors", the existence of which we discover only by pushing at the wire walls. What we thought was a simple and easily navigable space suddenly becomes fiendishly complex. As we try to make our way though it, we become trapped in an endless series of cul-de-sacs, unable to find the hidden doors that will either lead us ever deeper into the space, or else to an exit. Along the route there are references to past works by Nelson - piles of driftwood laid out as though for a bonfire, and some plaster pods that look to me like bait for a mousetrap.
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