Turner would turn over in his grave

From now until the 22 January 2006, Tate Britain will be playing host to an exhibition of the shortlisted artists for the Turner Prize. Ever a magnet for controversy, the prize has previously offered such spectacles as Damien Hirst’s Mother and Child, Divided (you know the one; pickled, bisected cow carcasses) and Tracey Emin’s My Bed. These, whatever else may be said about them, were certainly memorable. But just what is the Turner Prize out to prove?It was remarked by GS Whittet, in a letter to the Observer in 1984, the year of the prize’s inception, that “Turner must be rotating in his grave at the prize given in his name by the Tate gallery”. Yet, while a man of Joseph Turner’s era would indeed be somewhat bemusedby a prize which rewards the efforts of a transvestite potter (Grayson Perry, winner of the prize in 2003) and an artist who presents for exhibition an empty room with The Lights Going On and Off (Martin Creed, winner in 2001), Turner himself was by no means an uncontroversial figure in his day. His earlier works in oils received heavy criticism and his later style, so admired by the likes of John Ruskin, was nonetheless frequently ridiculed. Perhaps Turner would feel more empathy with the bearers of his prize than Whittet and others have given him credit for.The most traditional and simultaneously most controversial offerings on this year’s shortlist come from Gillian Carnegie, nominated for her solo exhibition at Cabinet, London. Her paintings, embracing the respected and quietly reassuring categories of still life, landscape, the figure and portraiture, reveal their artist as technically astute and almost certainly safe from the accusingcries of “I could do that!” which are so often and so easily uttered by many a spectator of modern art. Even Carnegie though, recluse as she is, still manages to create a stir, choosing as the subject for one series of paintings a discreetly anonymous posterior. Her peers on the shortlist are producers of the conceptual kind of art more generally associated with the Turner Prize. Damien Almond works in mixed media with film, photography, sculpture and real-time satellite broadcasts, exploring time and its effects. While not in any sense shocking, the works do raise questions about where the line should be drawn between traditional visual arts and film and have been the subject of much debate. The breadth of artistic approaches which the prize encompasses can be seen in the diverse concepts behind the works of Simon Starling and JimLambie, nominated respectively for solo exhibitions at The Modern Institute, Glasgow and the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona and at Anton Kern Gallery, New York, and Sadie Coles HQ, London. The former describes his work as “the physical manifestation of a thought process”, while for the Lambie, it is the sensory pleasure of his installations which takes precedence over any intellectual response that it may reflect or generate.We might well ask ourselves just what the point is of having artists of such varied techniques in competition for the same prize, but it is perhaps not the idea of a single or outright winnerwhich is at the heart of what this prize is about. The competitors’ works this year are by no means as controversial as previous years of Turner nominations. Yet they still represent the prize’s spirit of innovation and diversity. Public debate is arguably the lifeblood of the Turner Prize and when the pieces under discussion meet with criticism they will have done so in the public eye, which can only generate further interest. Even if the whole shenanigan is viciously dismissed with descriptions like that offered by government minister Kim Howells in 2002 of the works as “cold mechanical bullshit”, they have still provoked a reaction and in doing so have brought contemporary art to itsARCHIVE: 3rd week MT 2005