The Tate has announced a shortlist for the 2016 Turner Prize that is led by female artists and sculptural installations with a sense of humour. Michael Dean, Anthea Hamilton, Helen Marten and Josephine Pryde are the four British artists in the running for the prestigious £40,000 annual award (£25,000 for the winner and £5,000 each for the other three), which was founded in 1984 and has come to be regarded as a barometer of contemporary art in the UK.
After a 2015 edition won by Assemble, an architecture and design collective who launched a homewares showroom in collaboration with a Liverpool community, comes a shortlist with a focus on sculpture and installation, though all four artists work across different media.
The director of Tate Britain and chair of the Turner Prize jury, Alex Farquharson, says that the chosen artists reflect “a world saturated with images under the ubiquitous influence of the internet” and that “wit, playfulness and a sense of the absurd are also themes this year”.
Michael Dean is nominated for solo exhibitions at the South London Gallery and the de Appel arts centre in Amsterdam, filled with abstract sculptures in industrial materials that give physical presence to a language of his own invention. “Writing is at the heart of his practice,” says the curator Tamsin Dillon, one of this year’s jurors.
Anthea Hamilton was chosen for her show at the SculptureCenter in New York, Lichen! Libido! Chastity! The centrepiece, a doorway framed by a larger-than-life foam sculpture of a man’s naked buttocks, brought an unrealised 1970s model by the Italian designer Gaetano Pesce to surreal life. Appropriating imagery ranging from disco to Japanese Kabuki theatre and incorporating materials including rubber, silk and perishable foodstuffs, her environments are “charged with a sense of exoticism and desire,” says the juror Michelle Cotton, director of the Bonner Kunstverein.
Helen Marten, the youngest artist on the shortlist at 30, relates her sculptural assemblages to religious votive offerings but her titles “verge on the slapstick,” Dillon says. She was selected for the Turner Prize for her projects at the 2015 Venice Biennale and Green Naftali in New York. Marten is also on the shortlist for the inaugural Hepworth Prize for Sculpture, the UK’s first prize for sculpture.
Josephine Pryde is perhaps the odd one out: she is best known for photography, though her exhibitions often feature sculptural elements. Her Turner Prize nomination is based on a series shown at the CCA Wattis in San Francisco depicting disembodied female hands caressing electronic devices. Visitors could board a toy train to traverse the gallery—“a wry comment on exhibition-making in today’s entertainment-orientated society,” Cotton says.
“It’s great to see so many brilliant women artists on the list and interesting that expanded notions of sculpture are at the heart of this year’s selection,” says Sally Tallant, the director of Liverpool Biennial. “It is going to be a tough choice for the judges.” The winner will be named at a ceremony in December, following an exhibition of works by all four artists at Tate Britain (27 September-8 January).
