Tate Britain | Turner Prize History | Issue: Cliques & Cabals

Cliques & Cabals - Has the art shown in Turner Prize exhibitions reflected the art produced by British artists over the past 20 years?

No, it’s shown certain kinds of art and artists, and seriously neglected others.
Perhaps it has reflected what the Tate has been doing over the past 20 years.

As a artist myself, a painter, I’m concerned here with what kinds of art have been given preference, how and why artists are selected, and by whom.

Looking at who chooses the shortlisted artists, and how the panel of judges is assembled raises the question about whose controlling hand is at work?

Whatever else the Turner Prize is about, it serves as a huge marketing and publicity exercise for the Tate Gallery and for the dealers whose artists are regularly included on the shortlists. It has been sponsored by Channel Four, putting out the Tate brand to wide audiences (see Privatising Culture – Corporate Art Intervention since the 1980s by
Chin-tao Wu, Verso Books, 2003).

So should it be called the Tate Prize we might wonder?

It’s worth noting that Turner Prize panels in recent years have usually included the Tate’s Patrons of New Art and always include Sir Nicholas Serota as chair, alongside directors of various major museums, and sometimes art critics. There have often been very obvious and well documented links between the judges and the nominees (see 'Everyone’s a winner' Tate Magazine Issue 2 / 2002).

The Tate, as the most prestigious institution in the British art world, is now in a position (along with one or two high profile collectors) virtually to create the reputations of artists by including them in displays such as Days like These, Art Now, Intelligence etc. Subsequently, many of these artists will appear on Turner Prize shortlists. Exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (Jake and Dinos Chapman), the Ikon Birmingham and Tate Britain itself (Anya Gallaccio), come with Tate endorsements, and are also often followed by Turner Prize nominations. It is then in everyone’s interest to keep these artists’ work to the fore. Look at how the same names appear over and over in Tate displays and initiatives – Antony Gormley, Richard Deacon ( Tate trustees at one time or another). In 2004 we have Damien Hirst, again. Yet despite artists' criticisms of the Turner Prize, few could actually afford to turn down this kind of exposure. Such is the power of the Tate.

So how, as an artist, how do you get noticed? Well it certainly seems to help if you have connections with one of the London colleges, particularly Goldsmiths, whose former students have provided many shortlisted artists in the last 10 years. Perhaps choice of media is a significant factor. It is certainly true that short lists in recent years have quite rightly reflected the number of artists making video and installation art, and of artists working across media. But there have been few painters represented (only Gary Hume, Chris Ofili, Michael Raedecker and Glenn Brown since 1996), grossly misrepresenting artists working in this medium, and giving rise to the constant ridiculous debate these days about whether painting is dead or not.

Short lists have seemed very imbalanced in a number of ways. We may consider the representations of women artists, and artists whose cultural origins are non-white, or non-western. Yes Chris Ofili is a painter, yes he is black, yes Gillian Wearing is a woman, and yes there was an all-female short listed in 1997. These examples only serve as a smokescreen hiding underlying inequalities. The facts are that out of 77 finalists over 20 years, 21 have been women ( 28 %, including 9 female artists out of 12 finalists between 1997 and 1999 which distorts the averages), and only a handful of artists have been of non-western cultural origin.

You can’t please everyone all of the time, which is exactly why the format is wrong.

The Turner Prize is presented as being at the cutting edge of what young British artists are doing today, but is prize-giving the best way to celebrate the breadth of talent and innovation in fine art in this country? The major public art spaces need to be made more available to artists who by their nature are not so easy to get to, who may not be driven primarily by self-promotion, and whose work may not fit commercially motivated selection criteria.

My view is that the Turner Prize should be scrapped. It should replaced by annual exhibitions, at the Tate and other public venues for contemporary art, truly representative of the diversity of artists and the what they are producing. Shows should be selected and curated by people from outside the small group that make up the London art establishment.

I wait to be shocked.

Roy Pickering, artist and educator
2004

Tate Britain