Just when the Turner Prize and all the media attention it attracts was looking like a curse, rather than a blessing, on contemporary art – well, did you see the Channel 4 coverage last night? Lauren Laverne may have been presenting but the tone was more I’m A Celebrity… than Culture Show – along comes Elizabeth Price to remind us what it’s really all about.
I was actually rooting for Luke Fowler, but Price is a great choice for this year’s prize on a number of levels. Her films are compelling, tough, accessible yet clever, like the best pop videos put through a gruelling intelligence test – no flabby thinking allowed. But that’s only part of it. In less thoughtful, caring hands, this kind of attention to detail can leave you cold, elevate the form at the expense of the subject matter. For Price, an emotional as well as intellectual connection is clearly paramount – her work gets you in the gut as well as the head.
There are other reasons why Price is a deserving winner, and why she reaffirms that, despite all the naysayers, the Turner Prize still means something to British contemporary art beyond the Tate and the UK’s art establishment; that it is more than the art world backslapping so many people ‘outside the tent’ are quick to dismiss it as.
This time last year, before the show at BALTIC that Price was nominated for had opened, she was not a hugely in-demand artist, despite her ‘User Group Disco’ video (also shown at BALTIC) being one of the highlights of British Art Show 7. She was clearly not an art world insider being fast-tracked to the top of the pile by a coterie of influential supporters – another favourite gripe of the Turner Prize haters. She was – and is – an artist making work, carving out her niche methodically, precisely and effectively.
That focussed, steely character was clear to all when Price picked up the prize from Jude Law last night, and her acceptance speech is yet another reason to applaud the high profile the Turner Prize has, to enjoy the spotlight it shines on smart, curious and questioning contemporary art.
Her tribute to Modern Art Oxford Director and Turner Prize judge Michael Stanley, who died in September, was humane and heartfelt. Then, the gloves came off and she let rip at Michael Gove and the exclusion of the arts from his English Baccalaureate. And again, you felt that, yes, this is important – that the people who get all hot under the collar about the Turner and the kind of artists it champions are perhaps taking shots at the wrong target, that there are bigger, more vital battles to be fought.
Price went to a comprehensive school in Luton and studied at the Ruskin School of Art and the Royal College in an era when free access to higher education was still a universal right across the UK. She was, as she made clear in her speech, able to think that she could become an artist if she wanted to, in a way that may not be possible, or at the very least will be more difficult, in the future. These things make a difference to the artists we get and the art that is made.
There’s a certain neatness to the fact that it was a show at BALTIC in Gateshead – the host of last year’s Turner Prize – that Price won the prize for. Next October, the policy of the exhibition being held outside the capital every other year continues with Derry-Londonderry staging the show, in a move that is sure to guarantee headlines.
There is already talk of local disquiet, of 2013 in Northern Ireland’s second largest city becoming a year of their culture rather than the city’s. These are understandable concerns, and when the time comes there will surely be much debate and disagreement. And, crucially, whoever is on the shortlist next year, artists and their art will once again be in the spotlight.
The Turner Prize continues at Tate Britain until 6 January.
