All eyes will be on Baltic tonight for the announcement of who’s won the Turner Prize. Barbara Hodgson reports.
TONIGHT’S the night. Four artists will be waiting with bated breath, Channel 4 will have cameras at the ready for a special live broadcast and celebrity photographer Mario Testino, award in hand, will be ready to greet the winner.
It’s time for the Turner Prize announcement which will see a packed-out Baltic, joined by TV viewers across the country, find out which of the four finalists, whose art is currently on show in the Gateshead gallery, will bag the prestige and the top prize of £25,000.
National press will join The Journal to interview the winner after the Baltic’s specially-invited audience of 700 guests watch the 8pm grand event.
The artists on the shortlist are George Shaw, Martin Boyce, Karla Black and Hilary Lloyd whose work is being exhibited at Baltic until January 8 – a coup for the gallery, marking it out as the first outside the Tate in London to host the Turner Prize.
Only once before has it been taken outside the capital and that was to the Tate Liverpool in 2007, in the run-up to the city’s European Capital of Culture year.
Its October launch in Gateshead brought north the national press and won praise for the presentation of the exhibits which are showcased in four inter-linked spaces on level three.
And then came the crowds – a staggering 30,000 visitors in the first five days to see for free a show they’d have to pay for in London and, to date, more than 105,000 people have been through the doors –- well exceeding the number (between 70,000 and 100,000) it could expect in the capital in total. And it has over five weeks more to run.
The Turner Prize – set up in 1984 as a contemporary art award for outstanding work by British artists under the age of 50 – has a controversial history: think Damien Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde, Martin Creed’s lights going on and off and Tracey Emin’s unmade bed.
This time the judges, and they include Baltic director Godfrey Worsdale, have to choose from Shaw’s detailed enamel oil paintings, inspired by the estate where the 44-year-old Coventry-born artist, now living in Devon, grew up; sculptures by Boyce, 43, and Black, 38, both from Glasgow (Boyce’s thoughtful and nature-inspired and Black’s a blowsy affair made of everyday household materials) and film and projections of mundane scenes by 46-year-old Lloyd who, born in Halifax, graduated from Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic in 1987 and now lives in London.
Today the judges will sit down together and make their decision. The other members of the panel are Katrina Brown, director of The Common Guild in Glasgow, Vasif Kortun of Platform Garanti art centre in Istanbul, and Nadia Schneider, a freelance curator, while chairing it will be Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis.
The total prize pot is £40,000, with, besides £25,000 for the winner, £5,000 going to each of the other shortlisted artists.
Who’ll win? Well, we’ll find out at about 8.20pm, with the announcement and presentation by world-leading photographer Testino – whose portraits include the famous black and white images of Princess Diana – broadcast live by prize sponsor Channel 4 as part of a special half-hour programme.
Testino said: “I draw endless inspiration from the work of other artists so I am honoured to be presenting this year’s Turner Prize.
“As this is one of the most prestigious prizes in the art world, I am pleased that it is not limited to just London and I am delighted to be participating in this year’s ceremony at Gateshead.”