Turner Prize 2009
Tate Britain, London
It seems that the annual Turner Prize (worth a hefty £40,000 to the victor) cannot win. If it is perceived as too controversial, it is seen as sensational and flippant. If it is regarded as too conventional, it is deemed to be dull and boring. The four artists this year fall between the two – always an awkward position in terms of attracting attention. Nevertheless, there is no video art, nothing too wildly conceptual or to shock and alarm. Instead the artists have presented rather considered work, each having a gallery to themselves.
It is tempting to look for common threads, reflecting perhaps the bent of the selectors. However, save for work rooted in the world in which we live with a touch of political and environmental concern, each artist establishes a clear voice. There is also the use of unconventional materials, many carrying emotive and highly charged meanings.
First off is Lucy Skaer, whose complex and multi-layered installation, Thames and Hudson, incorporates a giant skull of a sperm whale, glimpsed through screens as if caught in a cage, 26 sculptures fashioned from coal dust and intricate drawings consisting of a mass of black spirals. There are issues here about waste and exploitation in an elegant, if complex, mediation on society.
Enrico David takes a different approach. Among other issues, he is concerned with sexual identity, particularly of gay men, who are presented as a series of popular stereotypes, in search of – and in thrall to – masculinity as expressed in typical work gear, but here subverted and parodied. A thoughtful borrower from popular art forms, these impact on two papier mâché eggmen converted into a surreal parade of body parts. Fragmented and disjointed, it is the way many of us feel at certain times.
The coolest presentation is by Richard Wright, who has carried out a delicate, highly detailed wall painting in gold leaf on the end wall of an otherwise bare gallery, except for one other small wall painting above the door. Made in response to the room’s architecture, the drawing has been carefully worked out – the kaleidoscopic-like image laboriously pounced onto the wall before the gold leaf was painstakingly applied. The skill involved is part of the qualities of the work. While the relationship with the context of the Tate remains obscure, there is a fascination with the image, its almost organic patterning, its preciousness and the fact that it is temporary and, once the exhibition is over, will disappear forever.
Any sense of the romantic conjured up by Wright is quickly dispelled by Roger Hiorns, perhaps the most conceptual of the four artists. Filling the centre of the gallery is a pile of metal dust from an atomised passenger jet engine, presenting the gas-guzzling machine in a completely different form. The dust, spread across the floor, recalls rugged terrain, a burnt and blackened landscape that is intriguing but uninviting. Three wall sculptures take equally unlikely materials – bovine brain matter, plastic and steel – to create unlikely and unexpected objects.
Smaller than previous exhibitions and with only the objects to see, apart from short unhelpful interviews with the artists, visitors are left to wander round the galleries looking at the work making an assessment of it in terms of achievement and intention. Hiorns and Wright are perhaps the frontrunners, with Wright a whisker ahead.
Emmanuel Cooper
The Turner Prize 2009 continues until January 3 2010
