Turner Prize 2024 at Tate Britain review: after years in the doldrums the infamous award comes roaring back

For some time I’ve dreaded the arrival of the Turner Prize each year, as it all became a very dour affair indeed. It seems unlikely that it will ever again reach the pearl-clutching front-page heights of the late Nineties and early 2000s, but you know what, this year, I really enjoyed it.

The four nominated artists all have distinctive approaches, and unique perspectives that hold interest even when you’re not sure what you’re meant to think.

Manila-born Pio Abad shows a selection from his nominated exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, created in response to the university collections, alongside items from which he displays elegant new drawings, sculptures and textiles to illuminate lesser-known stories behind them.

He has also written extended captions for each piece, so we discover that Prince Giolo, a northern Filippino man depicted in a 1692 etching, was in fact trafficked as a slave, contracted smallpox when he was brought to Oxford and was buried in an unmarked grave, but not before having a section of his skin removed for the Bodleian collection.

A display of bladed weaponry from Mindanao tells us that a staggering 90 per cent of Philippine material heritage exists in storage in Western museums. It’s shocking, and fascinating.

Two works by Claudette Johnson

Delaine Le Bas’s immersive installation, all scrawly wall drawings and creepy hand-made sculptures of rats and horses, provides a pleasing ‘wow’ moment, like walking into Quentin Blake’s darkest nightmares. It explores her British Roma heritage and family life with a bit of Greek myth thrown in for good measure and is absolutely made by the dark, twiddly soundtrack, which strongly resembles the less accessible work of Nineties trip pop party-weirdos Moloko.

Jasleen Kaur also explores her own specific cultural context, growing up in Glasgow in a family of South Asian heritage, using objects that carry narratives of assimilation, labour and class. So an oversized fake Axminster carpet is overhung by a perspex sky strewn with political flyers, a tracksuit, balls of hair, funeral flowers for someone called Vera, Irn Bru, lottery tickets; while a vintage Ford Escort adorned with a giant doily pumps out a combination of Sufi devotional music and Set You Free by N-Trance.

The way objects carry stories is a subject that appeals to me but her section is probably the hardest to get to grips with – possibly because, set between Abad’s polish and Le Bas’s exuberant weirdness, it feels a bit empty.

The final room, of paintings taken from Claudette Johnson’s three nominated exhibitions, is like a different show. Her large-scale canvases, depicting Black figures, crammed into the frame with little context to establish time and place, straddle drawing and painting and my, they’re special.

Figure in raw umber (2018) has something of the Old Master drawing about it, and her Young man in blue (2024) is just beautiful – watchful, powerful. She may be the most traditional of the four, but she’ll be the one to beat.

Tate Britain, from September 25 to February 16; tate.org.uk