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The Turner Prize exhibition opened at Tramway in October. This year’s selection of finalists is representative of some of the current trends within contemporary art. Research project – check. Performance piece – check. Handmade work – check.
Nicole Wermers’ works ‘Untitled’ and ‘Sequence’ are probably the most traditional of all the work on display. Fur coats have been stitched onto Cesca chairs, transforming the temporary gesture of draping a coat over furniture into something permanent. On the walls hang ceramic slabs resembling ephemeral tear-off adverts found on public notice boards. The work aludes to permanence and transience, although the relationship between the ceramic plaques and the chair sculptures remains elusive.
Bonnie Camplin’s ‘Patterns’ presents a research project as artwork. The work centres around interviews with people who purport to have experienced extraordinary events such as encounters with extraterrestrials. Research materials, printed articles and books surround the room and the viewer is invited to read these at their leisure; a photocopier is available for the visitor to take copies with them. A problem with the piece is the interviews themself. Shown on migraine-inducing CRT monitors with the soundtrack available through headphones, only five people can experience the interviews at any one time; everyone else must hover, waiting for their chance.
In addition to the unsatisfying display, the interviews present an ethical problem. According to Camplin, the interviewees believe in their experiences and she says she chooses to believe them too. Yet by revealing the identity and appearance of the interviewees Camplin is potentially exposing them to ridicule. If the artist can’t be sure visitors to the exhibition will view her subjects as respectfully as she does, what should be the level of her responsibility?
Janice Kerbel’s ‘Doug,’ is a song-cycle constructed by translating disasters into musical form. Aleatory music has existed as part of the contemporary classical music mainstream since the 1950s; ‘Doug’ owes much to the work of Cage and Boulez. The work is enjoyable, if not particularly deep, and beautifully performed by professional singers gathered from some of Glasgow’s best musical organisations, but I wondered what it was doing in the Turner Prize. Sure the Grammy or Pullitzer Prizes would have been a more natural home for ‘Doug?’
The final contender, Assemble, is a game-changer for the Turner. The collective comprises 18 people, who are refurbishing disused houses in the Granby area of Liverpool, turning disused buildings into liveable homes and derelict public spaces into a functioning community. The project provides training and employment to people in the Granby area. Assmble’s Turner exhibit is a showroom of wooden and ceramic products for domestic interiors – furniture, fire surrounds, lampshades – which can be ordered from the project’s website. The visual style is a contemporary take on ‘English Vernacular,’ offering a demotic style of interior decoration that owes much to William Morris in ethos and approach. It is a distinctive and refreshing alternative to the homogenising impact of a certain Swedish retailer of flatpacked furniture on domestic interiors across the globe.
The inclusion of Assemble in the Turner Prize raises some questions about the Turner Prize itself, and its development since its inception in 1984. The Assemble collective did not define themselves as artists and appear to have been surprised to be nominated. Rewind twenty years, to various Turner Prize-winning Young British Artists confidently stating their conceptual work is art ‘because we say it’s art.’ So, in 2015, who is able to determine who makes art? Does the artist still enjoy autonomy over their art making, or has the ability to award a ‘licence to practice’ been expropriated by a well-positioned external authority?
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