The most reported aspect regarding the shortlist for this year’s Turner Prize, was that not one of the four artists involved are video artists.
Curator and one of the judges, Andrea Scheikler, was reported in the Guardian last week as saying that he believed that there was a common thread this year amongst the artists on the shortlist in "an attention to the handmade and to craft; and a preoccupation with drawing."
Now I applaud the apparent recognition by the judges of the importance of drawing and craft skills of this year’s artists. I set great store by an artist’s ability to conceive an idea, develop that idea through drawing and be able to fully realise it solely by dint of their own efforts, whatever their chosen medium. Such work has, I believe, an integrity and purity, from intent to realisation, which the public can connect with.
However, it doesn’t in itself make for great art or indeed make that art more accessible by a public, which has come to regard the Turner Prize each year with a kind of weary bemusement. I hope Andrea Scheikler is right when he says "I think this is work that the public will be able to relate to very easily – this is strongly material, seductive art."
But I strongly suspect that the general public will regard some of the work by the four short-listed artists; Enrico David, Roger Hiorns, Lucy Skaer and Richard Wright, still as problematic and in places ‘difficult’. Whether they have something to say, and whether the public will relate, remains to be seen.
So for now, it is one step forward but the jury of public opinion is still out. The public must wait until 7th October, when the exhibition of short-listed work opens at Tate Britain.
Curator and one of the judges, Andrea Scheikler, was reported in the Guardian last week as saying that he believed that there was a common thread this year amongst the artists on the shortlist in "an attention to the handmade and to craft; and a preoccupation with drawing."
Now I applaud the apparent recognition by the judges of the importance of drawing and craft skills of this year’s artists. I set great store by an artist’s ability to conceive an idea, develop that idea through drawing and be able to fully realise it solely by dint of their own efforts, whatever their chosen medium. Such work has, I believe, an integrity and purity, from intent to realisation, which the public can connect with.
However, it doesn’t in itself make for great art or indeed make that art more accessible by a public, which has come to regard the Turner Prize each year with a kind of weary bemusement. I hope Andrea Scheikler is right when he says "I think this is work that the public will be able to relate to very easily – this is strongly material, seductive art."
But I strongly suspect that the general public will regard some of the work by the four short-listed artists; Enrico David, Roger Hiorns, Lucy Skaer and Richard Wright, still as problematic and in places ‘difficult’. Whether they have something to say, and whether the public will relate, remains to be seen.
So for now, it is one step forward but the jury of public opinion is still out. The public must wait until 7th October, when the exhibition of short-listed work opens at Tate Britain.
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Image of Roger Hiorns's installation "Seizure" by Sacha Pohflepp under Creative Commons 2.0
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