Tate Britain has announced the winner of the Turner Prize in 2024, its 40th year. Jasleen Kaur – an artist whose latest exhibition uses a vintage Ford Escort, worship bells and Irn-Bru to celebrate the Scottish Sikh community – won the award for her Alter Altar exhibition at the city’s contemporary arts venue Tramway.
The 38-year-old, who grew up in Glasgow, was praised for gathering “different voices through unexpected and playful combinations of material”. The judges noted the “considered way in which she weaves together the personal, political and spiritual in her exhibition”. The artist was presented with the £25,000 prize by actor James Norton at Tate Britain on Tuesday evening.
She beat fellow shortlisted nominees Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson and Delaine Le Bas.
The shortlisted artists have their work exhibited at Tate Britain from 25 September 2024 to 16 February 2025.
Contemporary
The prize is usually awarded at Tate Britain every other year, but has returned to Tate Britain for the first time in six years, having been cancelled in 2020. Last year it was held at Towner Eastbourne art gallery in East Sussex, and in 2022 at Tate Liverpool.
The winner of the prize received £25,000, and the remaining shortlisted artists will each receive £10,000.
Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain and chair of the Turner Prize jury said the shortlisted artists “make work that is full of life”.
“They show how contemporary art can fascinate, surprise and move us, and how it can speak powerfully of complex identities and memories, often through the subtlest of details. In the Turner Prize’s 40th year, this shortlist proves that British artistic talent is as rich and vibrant as ever.”
Kaur’s exhibition includes family photos, an Axminster carpet, a vintage car covered in a giant doily and kinetic handbells.
The members of the Turner Prize 2024 jury are Rosie Cooper, Director of Wysing Arts Centre; Ekow Eshun, writer, broadcaster and curator; Sam Thorne, Director General and CEO at Japan House London; and Lydia Yee, curator and art historian. The jury is chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain.
Jasleen Kaur
Nominated for her solo exhibition Alter Altar at Tramway, Glasgow. Exploring cultural inheritance, solidarity and autobiography, Kaur created sculptures from everyday objects, each animated through an immersive sound composition, giving them an uncanny illusion of life. Objects including family photos, an Axminster carpet, a vintage Ford Escort covered in a giant doily, Irn-Bru and kinetic hand bells were orchestrated to convey the artist’s upbringing in Glasgow’s Sikh community. The jury praised the artist’s evocative combination of sound and sculpture to address specifics of family memory and community struggle.
Pio Abad
Nominated for his solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Abad’s work considers cultural loss and colonial histories, often reflecting on his upbringing in the Philippines. His exhibition includes drawing, etchings and sculptures which depict, juxtapose and transform artefacts from Oxford museums, highlighting their overlooked histories and drawing parallels with familiar household items. The jury commended the precision and elegance with which Abad combines research with new artistic work to ask questions of museums. They also remarked on both the sensitivity and clarity with which he brings history into the present.
Claudette Johnson
Nominated for her solo exhibition Presence at The Courtauld Gallery, London, and Drawn Out at Ortuzar Projects, New York. Johnson is noted for her figurative portraits of Black women and men in a combination of pastels, gouache and watercolour. Countering the marginalisation of Black people in Western art history, Johnson shifts perspectives and invests her portraits of family and friends with a palpable sense of presence. In a year that the jury felt represented a milestone in her practice, they were struck by Johnson’s sensitive and dramatic use of line, colour, space and scale to express empathy and intimacy with her subjects.
Delaine Le Bas
Nominated for her presentation Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning at Secession, Vienna. Le Bas transformed the gallery into an immersive performative environment hung with painted fabrics and filled with theatrical costumes and sculptures. Drawing on the rich cultural history of the Roma people and her interest in mythologies, the artist addressed themes of death, loss and renewal, inspired by the passing of her grandmother. Noting Le Bas’s boldness at this moment in her practice, the jury were impressed by the energy and immediacy present in this exhibition, and its powerful expression of making art in a time of chaos.
See also: Coins from Brutus to George III
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/turner-prize-2024
