A Turner Prize of surprises

It’s that time of year again, the notorious Turner Prize is back, and the entrants are already stirring up passions.

The Turner Prize divides people. There’s Camp A – the stuffy art lover who thinks the Turner Prize should showcase more traditional art and Camp B – The more open-minded art lover who is quite happy for a stuffed dead dog to win the accolade.

We’d like to say we’re Camp B. Art is about exploration, innovation and pushing boundaries. You can’t ignore the debate (and profile) created by Tracy Emin and her bed or by Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde animals.

As with all art, it’s subjective, but Turner is a conversation and debate starter, it really gets the nation talking about art and for that we salute it!

This year the nominees are again varied.

The winner will be announced on 2 December 2013 in Derry-Londonderry. We wait with baited breath.

If you’re interested in past Turner Prize winners why not take a look at our Damien Hirst collection here and Antony Gormley here.

Want to chat to us about Turner? Tweet us at @monographart and Facebook us at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Monograph/

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is an artist of Ghanaian descent based in London. Who paints fictional characters. She says: “None of them is of existing people, but they are familiar”. She went to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Falmouth College of Arts and the Royal Academy Schools and has exhibited internationally in the Gwangju Biennale curated by Okwui Enwezor, Korea; ‘Flow’ at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York and ‘M25. Around London’.

Laure Prouvost’s

Laure Prouvost’s work twists words and film into diverse and sometimes confusing narratives that make you question language and meaning. French-born Prouvost lives and works in London, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘before, before. before it was, the title sequence, spinning before next, a squid’ at MOT International, London, 2011, and ‘All These Things Think Link’ at Flat Time House, London, 2010.

Tino Sehgal

Tino Sehgal is a British–German artist of partly Indian origin, based in Berlin. His works, as shown at his recent Tate Modern exhibition, are called “constructed situations” and involve one or more people carrying out instructions given by the artist. His work leaves no physical trace either – a cause of debate among art purists.

David Shrigley

But the undoubted audience favourite is David Shrigley whose witty commentaries has won him a lot of fans – if sometimes leaving the critics divided. Shrigley finds humour in flat depictions of the inconsequential, the unavailing and the odd – although he is far fonder of disquieting subject matter. He takes an odd viewpoint and often uses a deliberately limited technique.