While this year’s Turner Prize was cancelled in May in reaction to the pandemic, Tate Britain announced that it will be splitting a £100,000 (RM538,000) fund for the prestigious award into 10 Turner Bursaries.
Ten artists and collectives have been selected by the Turner Prize’s jury to receive one-off bursaries of £10,000 (about RM53,810); those selected have been collectively described by Tate Britain Director Alex Farquharson as “10 fantastic artists who reflect the exceptional talent found in contemporary British art.”
“From ceramics to film, performance to photography, they represent the many exciting and interdisciplinary ways that artists work today. These bursaries represent a vote of confidence in that work and offer some much-deserved support in challenging times,” he added in a statement.
The recipients include Liz Johnson Artur, Oreet Ashery, Shawanda Corbett, Jamie Crewe, Sean Edwards, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Ima Abasi-Okon, Imran Perretta, Alberta Whittle, as well as the political art collective Arika.
While the Turner Prize will return to its exhibition format in 2021, the selected artists will still have the opportunity to be eligible for the renowned British prize in future.
The Turner Prize’s decision to launch one-off £10,000 bursaries is in keeping with a recent trend of prestigious art prizes recognising the impact that smaller grants can make to a greater number of artists.
This year’s sum of £100,000 is more than double the usual total prize money awarded to shortlisted artists of the Turner Prize. The winner usually receives £25,000 (RM134,500), while the other finalists get £5,000 (RM27,000) each.
Founded in 1984, the Turner Prize is awarded annually to an artist born, living or working in Britain, for an outstanding exhibition of their work anywhere in the world in the previous year.
In 2019, the Turner Prize was awarded to Oscar Murillo, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Tai Shan after they formed a collective to show solidarity at a time of global “political crisis.”
Although they had never met before being shortlisted, the four artists decided then to split the £40,000 (RM215,000) prize money. – AFP-Relaxnews
