On December 7, Veronica Ryan was confirmed as the winner of the prestigious Turner Prize 2022.
Ryan's dreamy, evocative 'Multiple Conversations 2019–21' and 'Along a Spectrum 2021' secured her the win, beating off fellow finalists, Heather Phillipson, Ingrid Pollard, and Sin Wai Kin. The 66-year-old is the oldest artist to win the prize, and received a standing ovation and ferocious applause at the ritzy award ceremony at St George's Hall.
For the win, Ryan scoops the £25,000 top prize, as well as attention and interest from art critics and fans across the globe, while her fellow finalists will each receive £10,000. Ryan works with cast forms in clay and bronze; sewn and tea-stained fabrics, and bright neon crocheted fishing line pouches filled with a variety of seeds, fruit stones and skins to reference displacement, fragmentation and alienation.
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The work, taking centre stage in a serene yellow space, juxtaposes familiarity by displaying common objects but completely reconfiguring them to evoke thought. It explores themes such as history, belonging, human psychology and collective trauma, though the installations are open to interpretation.
It's less flashy and immersive than finalist Heather Phillipson's offering; more subtle than the radical and fantastical piece by Sin Wai Kin; and not as harrowing as Ingrid Pollard's detailed exploration of the passive acceptance of racism that blights our society, but it's still just as arresting, enticing and powerful.
All four finalists' work is politically and socially relevant, with the exhibition blending a weird and wonderful medley of video, sculpture, print, photography, mechanics, media and more. Ryan's work in particular is, at first, peaceful with the beauty of found objects lulling observers into a relaxed state, before the message and importance of sustainability and the devastating environmental issues raging on in the world come to the forefront.
For Ryan, the win is "tremendous". Speaking to the ECHO, she said: "When you're first nominated, it's 'wow' but there's so much you have to pay attention to - which work, where the work is, working within budgets and so on. So there's lots of practical sort of considerations about what you're doing with where the work is coming from and so on."
On how her installation was created and developed, she said: "It's often that I have different parts of work in the studio that become part of a wider installation so things come together. So, things that are in the studio, I think about, 'oh well how am I going to make that work in relation to other work?' So it's kind of bringing different parts of work together that have pre-existed in the studio."
The impact of the win - as well as the vital conversations the Turner Prize has conjured with its 2022 exhibition - is of utmost importance to the artist. Ryan continued: "It's tremendous. I think diverse issues, this whole question of visibility is really important - it's not going away any time soon.
"We have to keep visible, we have to keep being aware of the fact that there are different conversations, there are different ways that different people work and it's just not one conversation. There's lots of different dialogues, different stories, people come from different parts of the globe and have different things to say, have different experiences. We need to be able to talk about the different experiences that people have."
Of her fellow finalists, she said: "I don't live in Liverpool so I don't get here as much as I'd like to but I've come [to the exhibition] a number of times and looked at all the different work and it's interesting to see how all the artists have very vital conversations, very important conversations in our current world that we're in.
"A lot of dystopia, a lot of uncertainty, how we're going to resolve, questions about global warming. I've seen that there are interconnections - they're not separate stories so from my point of view, I don't see that you talk about one conversation; all the conversations relate to each other."
Anthony Spira, director of MK Gallery and Turner Prize juror, told the ECHO the decision on who would win was only finalised at 2pm on the day of the awards ceremony and announcement (December 7). Speaking to the ECHO, he said: "Prizes for art are incredibly difficult because you're not comparing like with like. I think I would have been happy with any of them as winners. It was a really difficult decision - we only finalised our decision today."
Ryan's work, and the three other shortlisted artists' work, is available to see as part of a free exhibition at Tate Liverpool until March 19, 2023.
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