Anyone remember the glory days of the Turner Prize? When every cabbie had an opinion on who should win Britain’s best-known and most “controversial” art award? When the term “Turner Prize art” came to denote a whole swathe of “pretentious” cutting-edge art, which evoked a curious mixture of derision and pride in the public at large? If there was a World Cup for wacky modern stuff, Turner Prize art with its dead sharks and lights going on and off meant that good old Blighty would be in the final at the very least. And we do like a competition, don’t we? That all feels a lifetime ago, in the light of today’s award to Veronica Ryan, in a competition that seemed to offer no obvious winner.
After a tricky period featuring a collaborative win (2019), a cancellation (2020) and an array of underwhelming creative collectives (2021), the 2022 Turner shortlist marked a return to the prize’s classic format, if not quite its absolutely classic form. We were back to four artists competing on a level playing field on the basis of an exhibition held over the previous 12 months. Well, not quite.
