The Turner Prize exhibition may be enjoyable but it’s time for artists to drop their earnest explanations and let visitors come to their own conclusions
Turner Prize 2019
Turner Contemporary, Margate Until January 12
The Turner Prize has been a little bit grim in recent years, often showcasing artists with a particular political agenda. I’m not very convinced by some of the art promoted in this way. Although it’s perfectly possible to imagine an excellent work of art putting the case for any political point of view, the ones rewarded always seem to have a particular slant.
This year, however, the prize exhibition has decamped to Turner Contemporary in Margate, and alongside the approved political messages the artists have sometimes managed to sneak in some aesthetic charm, even hedonism. It rather suits the seaside setting.
The artist I like best here is Tai Shani, who exhibits a room of wonderfully varied shapes, textures and colours, including a video screen with a rather repulsive speech (when I was there).
Tai Shani’s installation, DC Semiramis (above) is among the most recommended of the works on display at this year’s Turner Prize exhibition in Turner Contemporary, Margate
The interesting thing is that on first entry, the colours of the piece seem delightful, the textures charmingly squishy. The longer you stay, however, the more horrible it grows. After ten minutes I’d never seen anything so awful as the particular shade of green. Recommended.
Oscar Murillo, a Colombian artist, shows a room with 20 inept, life-size stuffed human figures in pews. Some of them have innards of clay spilling out. They all face a vast ripped black canvas, hung over the window facing the sea; the sea light falling over their rapt postures is unexpectedly moving.
He says he is making a statement about immigration, but I think the work is more open to interpretation than that.
I quite enjoyed this show, but I think the time is coming when shortlisted artists should be prohibited from making any kind of explanation of their work. The best examples here have a range of possible meanings, like most good art, and the worst can’t be transformed by justifications.
Either Shani or Murillo would be good winners. Both of them should feel free, in the future, to present their peculiar, ambivalent, inexplicable inventions without earnest explanations. Let the visitors come to their own conclusions.