This year’s Turner Prize has been awarded to the Glasgow-based artist Charlotte Prodger.
Prodger, who was nominated for her solo exhibition ‘BRIDGIT / Stoneymollan Trail’ at Bergen Kunsthall, was presented with the prize by the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at an awards ceremony at Tate Britain which was broadcast live by the BBC.
She was chosen from a shortlist that also included Luke Willis Thompson, Forensic Architecture and Naeem Mohaiemen.
Like all four of this year’s nominees, Prodger works primarily in film. For the Turner Prize exhibition she showed the 2016 film BRIDGIT. Shot entirely on an iPhone, the 32-minute film includes a range of footage shot over a period of a year, overlaid with a meditative narration.
From domestic images of Prodger’s home to a train journey through the Scottish countryside, it conjures a strong sense of landscape, ancient history and its impact on the present day, while exploring the artist’s own journey of coming out while living in rural Aberdeenshire. It embodies a shifting sense of the way personal identity is both mutable and yet also ingrained.
Commenting on winning the prize, Prodger said she was “quite overwhelmed” and “very touched”. She added: “I wouldn’t be in this room without the public funding I receive in Scotland.”
- Turner Prize 2018 reviewed:
‘Wonderful, imaginative film works that deserve the time they demand’
The 44-year-old artist, who was born in Bournemouth but grew up in Aberdeenshire, was earlier this year announced as the Scotland + Venice artist for the 2019 Venice Biennale. Last year she was nominated for the Jarman Award which was eventually won by Oreet Ashery.
This year’s Turner Prize jury was comprised of Oliver Basciano, art critic and international editor at ArtReview; Elena Filipovic, director of Kunsthalle Basel; Lisa Le Feuvre, executive director of Holt-Smithson Foundation; and Tom McCarthy, novelist and visiting professor, Royal College of Art. The jury is chaired by Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson.
Farquharson said that Prodger’s film was an example of the “most profound use of a device as prosaic as the iPhone camera that we’ve seen in art to date”.
Turner Prize 2018 continues at Tate Britain until 6 January 2019
Images:
1. Charlotte Prodger. Portrait, 2017. Photo: © Emile Holba 2018
2. Charlotte Prodger, Bridgit, 2016. Single channel video with sound, 32 Minutes. All images courtesy of the artist, Koppe Astner, Glasgow and Hollybush Gardens, London. Video Still.
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