Iraq protest camp shortlisted for Turner Prize

By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent

Last Updated: 3:41pm BST 08/05/2007

Politics not paint are set to dominate this year's Turner Prize after the announcement today of a four-strong shortlist of artists more exercised by issues such as the Iraq war, terrorism and religious strife than images of beauty.


	Video: Mark Wallinger with his replica of Brian Haw's camp

Leading the way is Mark Wallinger, a veteran of the Sensation generation of British artists.

He has been shortlisted for his controversial £90,000 work, State Britain, in which he meticulously recreated Brian Haw’s long-running anti-Iraq war peace demonstration outside Parliament, in galleries at Tate Britain at the start of the year.

Wallinger, 48, who also created Ecce Homo, a striking Christ-like figure for Trafalgar Square’s vacant fourth plinth in 1999, is likely to be the public favourite for the controversial £25,000 prize which is traditionally dominated by conceptual artists.

Wallinger was also shortlisted twelve years ago when he named a working racehorse A Real Work of Art. The horse was something of an also-ran and Wallinger was beaten to the Turner Prize by Damien Hirst.

Also shortlisted is Glaswegian artist Nathan Coley, 39, who makes architectural installations. Among his best-known are a scale model of the old Marks and Spencer store in Manchester demolished after it was damaged by an IRA bomb.

He also created a body of work about the loss of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, recreating the witness box from the trial of the Libyans charged with planting a bomb on the plane.

Coley has been nominated for a recent series about religious tensions - cardboard sculptures of a church, a mosque and a synagogue which he camouflaged to point up the similarities of faith.

The political vein continues with Zarina Bhimji, 43, a Ugandan Asian who works in film and photography. She is shortlisted for images from her native Uganda intended to show the grief and loss felt by Asians kicked out of the country by Idi Amin.

Only the fourth artist, Mike Nelson, 41, avoids direct politics. Also inspired by architecture, he has been nominated for a strange creation of a series of underground "hidden rooms" included an abandoned photographic studio.

A satire on the art world to demonstrate the loneliness and hard grind experienced by artists, it was shown for the first time at London’s Frieze Art Fair, attended by hordes of the world’s richest and most glamorous collectors.

Judges of the prize, to be announced in December, denied that they deliberately shortlisted political work. But one, the writer Miranda Sawyer, said: "We live in political times."

Wallinger's work was unveiled at the Tate Britain in January less than eight months after police dismantled Mr Haw's demonstration under new powers to limit protests around Parliament.

More than 15 people spent more than six months recreating the protest, working from photographs taken days before it was dismantled. Mr Haw's demonstration is now limited to a 10ft "cube", under the terms of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.

Wallinger has said that his work expresses his anger at the war in Iraq and the Government's clampdown on freedom of speech and erosion of civil liberties.

The shortlist was announced at Tate Liverpool, which will stage the Turner Prize exhibition in October, and where the prize will be awarded in December.

The prestigious event was moved to Liverpool as a "curtain-raiser" for the city's Capital of Culture year in 2008.

Commentary Grown-up list with political edge Breaking News News Telegraph

Commentary: Grown-up list with political edge

By Richard Dorment

Last Updated: 3:40pm BST 08/05/2007

This year’s Turner Prize shortlist definitely has a political edge to it, and that’s something that has been conspicuously absent from British art in recent years— at least in comparison to what is happening in the US.
All the nominated artists are well established and widely known for making consistently strong work.

advertisement

In fact, the only reason I was surprised to see Mark Wallinger’s name on the shortlist was because I thought he’d won the Turner Prize years ago (whereas in fact he was only nominated in the year Damien Hirst won).
I’m only sorry that they all can’t walk away with the £25,000 prize.
Wallinger is the one to beat. He is one of Britain’s most thoughtful and most original artists, coming up time and time with works of art that move, enlighten and speak to our deepest selves. His nomination for 'State Britain’, the ambitious installation you can see in the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain is richly deserved.
The 40 metre long reconstruction of the flags and banners the government seized from anti war protester Brian Haw’s camp outside the Houses of Parliament speaks out not only against the war but against this appalling government.
The destruction of the original protest materials by the police represented a blatant suppression of free speech and yet was allowed to happen with barely a peep of protest. By re-creating Haw’s camp in an art gallery Wallinger has made it live forever.
Glasgow born Nathan Coley made one of those works of art that once seen is never forgotten: he filled a gallery with cardboard models of every place of worship listed in the Edinburgh telephone directory. Not only was the spectacle of a room filled with churches and meeting halls, synagogues and mosques stunning, but it demonstrated, as no words could, the central importance of religious faith in Scottish life.
How you read the ubiquity of houses dedicated to God - as a sign of spirituality or of oppression - was up to each spectator.
Mike Nelson builds labyrinthine interiors through which his viewers are invited to wander. When you enter a typical work by Nelson you find yourself in a rabbit warren of corridors and shabby rooms where, often enough, it is clear that something has happened, some story has unfolded that may or may not have been violent but that makes you uneasy.
Nelson creates atmospheres, not narratives. It is up to us to imagine what might have happened or is going to happen in these spaces. In that sense, wandering through one of his installations is like picking up a short story and finding yourself in the middle of it.
The final shortlisted artist, Zarina Bhimji, makes ravishing films that have no linear narrative but that cumulatively explore the natural beauty and the terrible history of her native Uganda.
She is the one artist on the list whose work is frankly beautiful, but it’s a beauty that is always tinged with awareness of the past.
Whoever wins, this year’s exhibition of work by the shortlisted artists (at Tate Liverpool for the first time) is bound to be one of the most interesting of the year.
Congratulations to the judges - Michael Bracewell, Fiona Bradley, Thelma Golden, Miranda Sawyer and Christoph Grunenberg - for coming up with such a grown up, consistently interesting list.

**************************************************************

THE TURNER PRIZE SHORTLIST 2007

This is the first time that the Turner Prize has been presented outside London since it began in 1984. The prize is awarded to a British artist under the age of fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months up to May 2007		.