Though it’s been described by many art critics as being far from a classic year, the Turner Prize 2014 winner, Duncan Campbell, is undoubtedly the people’s choice out of the four artists nominated in the shortlist of finalists. He was awarded the prestigious prize at the awards show at the Tate Britain, which was broadcast live on Channel 4 on the 1st December 2014, confirming his place alongside other recent winners like Tracey Emin, Damian Hurst, Steve McQueen and Grayson Perry.
Campbell picked up the prestigious prize, along with the £25,000 prize money, for his film, It For Others, a 54-minute response to Chris Marker and Alan Resnais’ 1954 film essay, Statues Also Die, which looked at how African artefacts were viewed differently when they were put on display in Western museums. It was initially created as a part of Scotland’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale earlier in the year, benefiting from choreography from dancer Michael Clark.
The prize was presented to Duncan Campbell at the awards show by British actor, Chiwetel Ejiofer, who starred in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave and is currently earmarked to play the leading role in the adaptation of Marching Powder. Campbell described his walk to the stage to pick up the award as “dream like” and when you consider some of the past winners and what they’ve gone on to do in their own quarters of visual art you can see that there’s a lot of excitement from the artist about the future possibilities with a Turner Prize in his kit bag.
The Dublin-born filmmaker and artist was shortlisted alongside print maker Ciara Phillips, who was nominated thanks to the strength of her solo exhibition at The Showroom, London; James Richard, a filmmaker from Cardiff who was nominated for his contribution to The Encyclopaedic Palace at the 55th Venice Biennale; Tris Vonna-Michell, nominated for the slide show and audio work in his solo exhibition Postscript (Berlin) at Jan Mot, Brussels. Each of the nominated artists receive £5,000 each for their inclusion in the prize.
The exhibition for the 2014 Turner Prize has been presenting the work of the shorlisted artists at the Tate Britain in London since the 30th September 2014, and now that the winner has been announced, you’ll have until the 4th January 2015 to see the work collectively before the exhibition comes to a close. Adult tickets are £11 (including donation), with concessions for £9.50, plus a booking fee of £1.75. Tickets for students and under 18s are just £6, but there’s some adult material in the exhibition to take into account. The Tate Britain is open from 10am to 6pm daily, but the last admission and ticket sales for the Turner Prize 2014 exhibition is at 17.15.
This year sees the Turner Prize celebrate its 30th anniversary, having begun back in 1984 to celebrate new developments in contemporary art exhibitions in the previous 12 months. The 2014 judging panel consisted of the executive director and curator of Artists Space, New York, Stefan Kalmár; the director of Spike Island in Bristol, Helen Legg; director of Glasgow International Sarah McCrory; artistic director of Wiels in Brussels, Dirk Snauwaert; and the jury is chaired by Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain.
The 2014 Turner Prize has turned out to be much less dramatically impactful than a lot of its predecessors, moving away from the headline attention grabbing works that have wowed audiences in the past. It feels like a year of established maturity as the prize can can rely on the strength of its name now, without the need to tramp around like the enfant terrible of the art prize world. However, we don’t expect this level of quieter artistic expression to become the norm in future shortlists, so if you’re worried that we’ll be missing out on formaldehyde cows, messy bedrooms and transvestite potters from here on in, we wouldn’t count on it.
