Turner Prize 2011 - show opens 21 October

Associated media

21 October 2011 – 8 January 2012

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.  

South Shore Road,  

Gateshead. NE8 3BA

Open daily 10.00 - 18.00  

except Tuesdays 10.30 – 18.00  

ADMISSION FREE

The Turner Prize 2011 exhibition is taking place at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead in partnership with Tate. This is the first time the Turner Prize has been presented beyond Tate’s galleries. The exhibition features work by the four shortlisted artists: Karla Black, Martin Boyce, Hilary Lloyd and George Shaw. The winner of the prize will be announced during a live broadcast of the award ceremony on Channel 4, as part of a special half-hour programme, on the evening of 5 December 2011.This year’s prize, sponsored by Channel 4, is £40,000 with £25,000 going to the winner and £5,000 each for the other shortlisted artists.

The winner will be decided by a jury whose members are: Katrina Brown, Director, The Common Guild, Glasgow;VasifKortun, Platform Garanti, Istanbul; Nadia Schneider, freelance curator;Godfrey Worsdale, Director, BALTIC and Penelope Curtis, Director of Tate Britain and Chair of the Jury.

The shortlisted artists for the Turner Prize 2011 are:

Karla Black, who presents two new works that continue her fascination with the possibilities of sculpture and materials.  Doesn’t Care in Words  (2011) begins with cellophane curtains that partially block the entrance to her gallery. Forced to walk around them, the viewer navigates their paint-encrusted forms before an undulating landscape of paper and powder is revealed.  More of the Day  (2011), made of coloured cellophane, is suspended from the ceiling as something between a painting and a sculpture. In Black’s immersive and sensory environments, colour, form and scale are foregrounded, prioritizing material experience over language.  

Martin Boyce, who presents a selection of works including Do Words Have Voices (2011), a sculpture inspired by a library table designed by Jean Prouvé for the Maison de l’Etudiant in Paris,  and  Beyond the Repetition of High Windows, Intersecting Flight Paths and Opinions (A Silent Storm is Painted on the Air),  an architectural intervention made for the exhibition. Suspended from the ceiling, the leaf-like forms that hang from this new work are drawn from the designs of Jöel and Jan Martel. Creating a landscape in the gallery, Boyce’s works interrogate urban forms along with the history of modernist design and its working processes.  

Hilary Lloyd, who presents Shirt  (2011), Tower Block  (2011)  and  Moon  (2011) along with Floor  (2011), made for the exhibition. Moon, presented on two LCD monitors, brings multiple shots, ordered within a grid, of the moon passing behind a clock tower.  Floor, a three-channel projection of abutted images of a floor, jolts and pulsates, each one repeating endlessly. Lloyd’s hyper-aesthetic images are drawn from a very everyday world. She investigates perception, questioning how the act of looking is shaped and constructed. Her modes of presentation are as vital as the images themselves. Projectors, monitors and their supports bring a sculptural presence that controls viewers’ navigation of the gallery.  

George Shaw, who presents a selection of recent paintings such as The Age of Bullshit (2010) and  Landscape with Dog Shit Bin (2010), alongside several new works. His subject, always the housing estate in which he grew up, is rendered in Humbrol enamel to create timeless scenes that are at once autobiographical and universal. They are familiar to those who have grown up in this country, yet have an unnerving disquiet. New paintings, including The Devil Made Me Do It, Shut Up and The Same Old Crap (all 2011) continue his investigation of this psychologically charged landscape within seemingly traditional bounds.

The Prize, established in 1984, is awarded to a British artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the 12 months preceding 4 April 2011. It aims to promote public discussion of new developments in contemporary British art and is widely recognized as one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe. 
A dedicated programme featuring the live announcement of the winner will be broadcast on Channel 4 on 5 December 2011. Additional content will feature on Channel 4 as part of its arts strand, Random Acts, as well as additional programming on More4.

Turner Prize 2011 is connected by Nokia, presented by Channel 4 and supported by NewcastleGateshead Initiative and Arts Council England.