Turner Prize 2024 at Tate Britain

Celebrating its 40^th anniversary, one of the most renowned accolades in contemporary British art has returned featuring eclectic exhibitions from the four shortlisted artists, with a winner to be announced on 3^rd December 2024.

Reflecting Pio Abad’s commitment to unearthing unexamined histories, every piece in To Those Sitting in Darkness is accompanied by contextual insights. This detail proves especially thoughtful for Kiss the Hand You Cannot Bite (2019), a concrete effigy of the exiled Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos’s 30-carat ruby, diamond and pearl bracelet, created in collaboration with his wife, jeweller Frances Wadsworth Jones. The use of a material typically associated with urban development and foundational stability and the tomb-like configuration of the human-sized sculpture, invites reflection on power and permanence, offering a sharp postcolonial critique of the legacy of dictatorship. 

Forcing viewers to repeatedly shift their gaze from the ceiling, Jasleen Kaur’s Alter Altar features Begumpura, a suspended artwork featuring everyday objects – ranging from an anti-RSS flyer to glow-in-the-dark prayer beads – set against the backdrop of Glasgow’s skies. Below, found photographs of protest and restitution are strewn across the floor. The arrangement stresses the labour involved in constructing collective memory, but the expansive, well-lit room it occupies diffuses some of its intended emotional weight. 

Rooted in her British Roma heritage, tales and mythologies, Delaine Le Bas’s Incipit Vita Nova is heard before it is seen. Organised like a haunted house, its spaces are separated by fabric, walls and sounds ranging from raucous to eerie. Chaos, the first of three rooms, is guarded by Marley, a ghostly installation inspired by the unredeemed ghost from Dickens’s 1843 story A Christmas Carol. Crafted from organdie, wire and thread, Marley (2023) seems to guide, or rather, haunt onlookers as they navigate the painted spaces. Red footprints lead into the final room, Ascension, where Know Thyself (2024) – one of the most famous maxims inscribed above the Ancient Greek Temple of Apollo in Delphi – marks the end of the exhibition in a bold, marker-like font in the same scarlet hue.

The longest-practicing artist of the four, Claudette Johnson, presents a display that stands in stark contrast to Le Bas’s work in terms of subtlety. Her flair for colour is evident in every large-scale portrait, but it is in Pietà (2024) that this shines most brightly. The oil and pastel painting shows a man holding the unconscious body of a young man protectively, one hand resting on the young man’s stomach, checking for a wound or signs of life. There is no blood in the frame, the unconscious figure’s deep red sweater – unbuttoned and tied around his waist – coupled with the work’s title, which traditionally evokes images of Mary holding the lifeless body of Jesus, is more visceral than the goriest wound.

And despite the traditional disposition of her art, Johnson’s portraits feel more fully realised than the bolder, bigger and louder works of her fellow nominees. While not quite revolutionary, her work adds a much-needed depth to a series of transient spectacles and explorations that stop just short of being truly radical.

Christina Yang
Image: Installation view of Jasleen Kaur, Alter Altarat Tramway, Glasgow 2023. Courtesy of Tramway and Glasgow Life
Photo: Keith Hunter

Turner Prize 2024 is at Tate Britain from 25^th September 2024 until 16^th February 2025. For further information or to book visit the exhibition’s website here.