Displaying items by tag: Turner Prize

The 30th Turner prize will be contested by four artists who are almost impossible to pigeonhole, using techniques that include film, storytelling, installation and screenprinting.

The shortlist, announced on Tuesday at Tate Britain, is made up of Duncan Campbell, Ciara Phillips, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell.

All four are in a sense collagists, often using images and films they have physically discovered or found online. They also explore subjects that are more their parents' history than their own.

Scottish artist, Douglas Gordon, who won a Turner Prize in 1996 and represented Britain at the 1997 Venice Biennale, was told Wednesday, November 28, that his solid gold sculpture, The Left Hand and the Right Hand Have Abandoned One Another (2007), had gone missing from Christie’s London. Worth approximately $800,000, Christie’s was unable to tell Gordon when the piece had disappeared from their warehouse or where it had gone.

The piece had been part of an exhibition curated by Michael Hue Williams and organized in part by Christie’s. Though Gordon owns the work, it was out on consignment when it disappeared and Williams is being held responsible for any information surrounding its disappearance.

Disconcertingly, Christie’s failed to notify Gordon of the work’s disappearance until two weeks after they realized it had gone missing. Christie’s confirmed that the sculpture was returned to its vault on May 24. On August 14 the work was transferred to a small box from its vault and sometime after that, an art handler or technician noticed that the box had no weight. Christie’s reported the work missing to officials on November 8, but a proper investigation did not begin until November 12.

Composed of nearly 9 pounds of gold, Gordon believes that his work was melted down, as it would be easier to sell that way, although the value would decrease. The Left Hand and the Right Hand Have Abandoned One Another was supposed to be prominently featured at an upcoming exhibition of Gordon’s work at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

There may be two painters on this year's Turner prize shortlist, but traditionalists should pause before sighing with relief.

One of them paints landscapes in the kind of enamel paint used for decorating model trains and aeroplanes; the other counts lipstick, bath bombs and bronzing powder among her unorthodox materials.

The painters, George Shaw and Karla Black, are joined on the 2011 prize shortlist by sculptor Martin Boyce and video artist Hilary Lloyd.

Prize juror Katrina Brown, director of the Common Guild in Glasgow, said the list was not representative of "one school, or cluster, or movement – there is every medium in the mix and it has a diversity and maturity about it".

In contrast to the Young British Artist-dominated shortlists of the 1990s, when the centre of UK artistic life appeared to be the few square miles around Shoreditch, this list is determinedly non-metropolitan, with only one of the artists – the Newcastle Polytechnic-trained Lloyd – based in London.

"It is a sign of the maturity of the art scene in Britain that it is not all concentrated in the capital," said Brown.

Indeed, the whole prize will turn its back on London this year: the annual Turner prize exhibition, which opens on 21 October, will be hosted by the Baltic gallery in Gateshead.

It is the first time in the show's 27-year history it has been held outside a Tate gallery and only the second time it has been held outside London.

Shaw, who studied in Sheffield, lives and works in Devon while Black and Boyce are based in Glasgow – where the last two winners of the prize, sculptor Susan Philipsz and painter Richard Wright, were brought up.

Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain and chair of the jury, said that the Glaswegian focus was testament to the strength of the training available at Glasgow School of Art in the 1990s.

Curtis said of the two painters: "One may be seen as innovative but is actually quite traditional, while the other seems quite traditional but is actually quite innovative."

The work of 38-year-old Black involves cosmetic products – including nail varnish, eyeshadow and moisturiser – deployed on a grand scale in large installations that look more sculptural than painterly.

But juror Godfrey Worsdale, director of Baltic, said her work could be compared to that of the abstract expressionists, the artist hurling cosmetic products across a surface just as Jackson Pollock cast paint over canvas.