Tate Britain has announced Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur, and Delaine Le Bas as the four artists shortlisted for its prestigious annual Turner Prize. Celebrating its 40th year, the Turner Prize stands as the U.K.’s foremost accolade for contemporary art and has, over the decades, propelled some of the nation’s most prominent artists to international recognition, including Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley, Rachel Whiteread, Damien Hirst, and Steve McQueen.
The winner of the Turner Prize, who receives £25,000 ($31,000), will be named at a ceremony at Tate Britain on December 3. A further £10,000 ($12,500) goes to each of the runner-up artists. An exhibition of works by all four artists will also open at the London museum from September 25 to February 16, 2025.
“This year’s shortlisted artists can be broadly characterized as exploring questions of identity, autobiography, community, and self in relation to memory or history or myth,” said Tate Britain’s director Alex Farquharson at a press conference held at the museum this morning.
Filipino artist Pio Abad, born in Manila in 1983, has been nominated for his exhibition “To Those Sitting in Darkness” at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Jasleen Kaur, born in Glasgow in 1986, is nominated for her installation “Alter Altar” at Tramway in Glasgow, which uses the kind of everyday items that immediately evoke a certain time or place like a can of Irn-Bru or an old Ford Escort.
Another captivating immersive installation by Delaine Le Bas has caught the attention of this year’s judges. The artist, born in Worthing in 1965, is nominated for her exhibition “Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins the New Life/A New Life is Beginning” at Secession in Vienna. The space was brought to life through expressive sculpture and costume, intertwining universal myth and lore with personal histories inspired by the loss of Le Bas’s grandmother.
Artist Claudette Johnson is celebrated for two significant institutional exhibitions last year: “Presence” at the Courtauld Gallery in London and “Drawn Out” at Ortuzar Projects in New York. Born in Manchester in 1959, she immerses herself in art history, reinventing old tropes within her vibrant portraits of Black women, children, and men.
Last year, the multidisciplinary artist Jesse Darling has won the Turner Prize.
