Bonnie Camplin, Janice Kerbel, Nicole Wermers and the collective Assemble are the four nominees for the Turner Prize 2015, Tate Britain announced today at Tramway in Glasgow, the venue for this year’s exhibition (1 October 2015-17 January 2016). The annual award for a British or UK-based visual artist under 50 is chosen on the strength of an exhibition or “other presentation of work” from the previous 12 months. Stretching the criteria for 2015, the shortlist includes two one-off performances and an on-going project to transform a Liverpool housing estate.
Bonnie Camplin, whose practice combines drawing, film, performance, music and writing, is nominated for The Military Industrial Complex, a study room installation exploring the idea of “consensus reality”, which was originally staged at the South London Gallery. Janice Kerbel’s DOUG is a comedic musical composition, written in nine parts for six voices from soprano to bass, commissioned by The Common Guild in Glasgow.
The German-born artist Nicole Wermers is recognised for the exhibition Infrastruktur at Herald Street gallery in London, a sculptural installation of chairs draped in fur coats questioning consumer culture. Meanwhile, Assemble, a London-based collective of 18 designers and architects, is still working on its Granby Four Streets project to refurbish derelict houses and public spaces in Toxteth, Liverpool, in collaboration with a local community trust.
Despite being held in Scotland for the first time, this year’s Turner Prize shortlist is the first since 2004 not to feature any Scottish artists. Five past prize winners, including last year’s winner Duncan Campbell, and a further nine nominees graduated from the Glasgow School of Art.
A winner of the £25,000 award (nominees receive £5,000) will be announced on 7 December, after deliberations by a jury including Alistair Hudson, director of the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art; Kyla McDonald, artistic director of Glasgow Sculpture Studios; Joanna Mytkowska, director of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the critic Jan Verwoert. Penelope Curtis, the outgoing director of Tate Britain, will chair the prize for the last time.