And the lucky winner is...

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... We don’t know either but here is the low-down on the 2014 Turner Prize entrants

2014 is the 30th anniversary of the Turner Prize, an annual award from Tate, now worth £40,000 spread across four finalists - £25,000 to the winner, £5,000 each to three runners-up – to recognize an artist under the age of 50, born or working in Britain, for an outstanding presentation of work or exhibition in the year prior to nomination. Tate states that the annual prize is designed to ‘promote public discussion of new developments in contemporary British art’.

This year the four short-listed artists are James Richards, Tris Vonna-Michel, Ciara Phillips and Duncan Campbell. Film dominates three of the four candidates’ work, with the jurors choosing to feature videos and projections more than static presentations. Tate curators Lizzie-Carey Thomas and Sofia Karamani have worked with the four finalists to recreate their works within the Turner Prize exhibition space at Tate Britain.

James Richards (born Cardiff, 1983), makes video collages and installations taken from original and found material. Musical composition plays a major part in his work. The soundtracks are intended to heighten the visceral involvement of the viewer, often creating a sense of claustrophobia when combined with visual images. He edits his collages using repetition and a visual stretching of film footage to extend time, to create an emotional sensation.

The first room is darkened for Richards’ opening sequence, a 12-minute digital film titled ‘Rosebud’, 2013, shown at the Venice Biennale last year. Richards states that it was created around ‘a restricted set of image sensations’. It centres on footage shot in a library in Tokyo of pages from photography monographs, including works by Robert Maplethorpe and Man Ray. Sexual images are forbidden in library books in Japan. The explicit images have not been removed but sandpapered out. The soundtrack and close-shot footage, often indistinct and intentionally blurred add to the drama of the film. It adds a feeling of voyeurism, stepping into another person’s world.

In the second room Richards shows two series of works, one Untitled Merchandise (Lovers and Dealers), 2007 (six machine-knitted blankets), visually references boyfriends and art dealers of the American artist Keith Haring (1958–90), who were instrumental in promoting his career. In each one Haring is intentionally relegated to the edge of the pictures. The appropriated images have been printed on army blankets, normally used to portray military heroes. In The Screens (2013), Richards has set up four slide projectors to show pages from a Dutch instruction manual. At first glance it looks like a series of self-harm images but they are all theatrical make-up techniques.

The next gallery space displays the work of Tris Vonna-Michell (born Southend-on-Sea, 1982), an artist who creates ‘circuitous multi-layered narratives’. This room is also darkened to project four works: a film, a slide installation, and two lightboxes. The film is Finding Chopin: Dans l’Essex (2014, 13.45 minutes). The screen is placed in a corner of the gallery, creating a dense, private space, to watch while listening to a monologue on the French pioneer of sound poetry Henri Chopin (1922–2008), who lived for some time in Essex, close to Vonna-Michell’s home. The film with its voice-over is the artist’s venture to find Chopin. It starts and ends with a seaside sequence. It is baffling and watchable. A lightbox display Addendum (Finding Chopin: Dans l’Essex) (2014) weaves together material elements of the film. Across the room Vonna-Michel displays a synchronized spoken-word slide installation Postscript IV (Berlin) (2014, 9.6 minutes). It focuses on the artist’s quest to discover the Berlin roots of his German-born mother.  The artist draws you in to his story, like a detective searching for clues. Highly watchable.

From darkened rooms into the light and the exuberant colours in the prints of Ciara Phillips (born Ottawa, Canada, 1976). Phillips sometimes works alone and at times with groups in a communal artistic practice. Her exhibition space is the most arresting, with its colour-drenched walls filled with hand-printed designs on paper and textiles. Her collective presentation is titled ‘Things Shared’ and draws together elements of previous and current projects, such as ‘J4DW’ at the Showroom, London in 2014, and ‘Pull Everything Out’ (2012). Phillips’ states ‘I prefer letters to words – words can be a limit on meaning but letters give voice to other languages present in the work’. Her wall-pasted prints frame the room whilst three-dimensional letters O and K punctuate the gallery space.

In the final rooms, once again darkened for film, the works are by Duncan Campbell (born Dublin, 1972). He brings together archive footage, photographs, interviews, animation and re-enactment to create ‘authentic’ documents. He has chosen two films to show. Sigmar (2008, 10 minutes), purchased by Tate in 2011, is Campbell’s fragmentary research on the German artist Sigmar Polke. The longer film, It For Others (2013, 54 minutes), develops its theme from new and archive footage to ‘reflect on how objects become commoditised’ (Tate, Turner Prize 2014). Campbell changes images in fast succession with layer upon layer of visual references. The running time is long (screened on the hour from 10a.m.-5p.m.), but worth it for those who have time to watch.

So, who will win the Turner Prize this year? At a preview of the exhibition, Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis, chairman of the Turner Prize jury, stressed the fact that she is not a juror herself. The decision-makers are Stefan Kalmár, executive director and curator of Artists Space, New York; Helen Legg, director, Spike Island, Bristol; Sarah McCrory, director, Glasgow International; and Dirk Snauwert, artistic director, Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels. They represent British and International artistic practice. The winner will be announced on 1 December 2014.