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Flat filled with copper sulphate on the Turner Prize shortlist
Amar Singh28.04.09
AN ARTIST who transformed a derelict London flat into a shimmering blue cave is among the shortlisted nominees for this year's Turner Prize announced today.
Roger Hiorns filled a disused bedsit in Elephant and Castle with 90,000 litres of liquid copper sulphate for his exhibit Seizure.
Hiorns, 34, who lives in Swiss Cottage but works from a studio in Deptford, will compete against fellow Londoner Enrico David, 43, and two Glasgow-based artists, Lucy Skaer, 34, and Richard Wright, 49, for the £25,000 prize.
Hiorn's installation, which drew hundreds of visitors to a condemned south London council flat last autumn, involved a painstaking process of pouring the highly toxic cerulean-blue sulphate into the flat.
The shards of crystal that encrust the entire space, achieving its eerie grotto effect, formed after slowly cooling the liquid down to an ambient temperature of 20C.
Visitors must wear rubber boots and gloves to view it.
Describing Seizure last year, Hiorns said: "The piece has an aggressive nature, as the name suggests. It's the idea of a solid mass taking over a space which was once someone's home that I find really appealing.
"I'm not a scientist. I'm more concerned with starting a natural process which will go on happening by itself. It's never ending. It won't stop, whatever you do."
But despite the work's popularity, which saw it extended as an exhibition to the end of last November, Hiorns said that the increased footfall in the bedsit was harming the installation.
"The viewing public is always a paradox for me. In a way I make artworks in spite of people. The people who come to visit the work are fundamentally the people who are destroying it," he said.
The Turner Prize, which was established in 1984, is awarded to any British artist under 50.
Previous winners have since gone on to become household names including Gilbert and George, Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor and Chris Ofili.
But the Turner Prize shortlist often triggers complaints that conventional art is overlooked in favour of left-field exhibits such as Tracey Emin's infamous My Bed in 1999.
The winner, who will be announced at Tate Britain on 7 December, will pocket £25,000.
The three other shortlisted artists will pick up £5,000 each.
This year's jury includes Charles Esche, the director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, writer and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, art critic Jonathan Jones, Folkestone Triennial curator and director Dr Andrea Schlieker and Tate Britain's director Stephen Deuchar, who is also the jury's chairman. Three of the shortlisted artists' works will be shown at Tate Britain from 7 October.
Reader views (5)
This is the disposable society: cars, houses, clothes, relationships - get tired of them and toss them out. The same seems to apply to art: make art that is ephemeral, transient. Rush now and see it before it disappears, and then on to the next. Interesting, but where is the joy that one feels in returning to a painting, a sculpture, a tapestry; in renewing acquaintance with an artist through a work that is there, permanently providing the emotional refuge that great art - from poetry to opera to the Sistine Chapel - has always offered.
- Barbara Alloway, United States
Ah - the predictable cry of the insensitive idiot: "That doesn't even look like anything! Whats it supposed to be? My 3 year old could do that. Blah blah, bleat, blah, whatever." Art is about expression, its about breaking down barriers, changing paradigms, it is disturbing, radically different, difficult and ahead of its time. Did Da Vinci and Michelangelo timidly copy the style and technique of the old masters? No! They were bold and radical. They changed art forever, they broke the mould. Artistic method is changing all the time. Photography for instance - would you like to dismiss photography because "its not like proper drawing is it?" Lets go back further, lets get rid of oil paint and go back to egg tempera because theres more skill in mixing up the paint yourself? On yer bike Leonardo.
Furthermore, the urinal you're talking about; Duchamp's "Fontaine" - arguably the most influential artwork of the 20th century, predates Monet's death by 10 years. So called "contemporary" art has been around longer than you think. Get used to it, also grow a brain.
- Samantha Sheard, Cambridge, UK
Yes. I just can't express how much I agree with the previous comments. It's amazing what these shocking toff-artists can get away with. My hairdresser could have done a much better job. Where is the beauty in this? The shocking audacity just makes me disgusted. The real old masters like Courbet and paintings like the sublime 'Origin of the World' are examples of what art should be like. What we need is real craftmanship from our artists. As far as I am concerned no one can do art any more: it stopped in about 1927 when Monet died. Someone told me the other day that nowadays they're even showing urinals in art galleries. What next? Cadavres in our Cathedrals?
- Rrose Esongib, Felixtowe, Iceland
I filled my friend's flat with green bubble bath. Do I get to win too?
- Keith Price, Luton, England
So,the traditional language of European art is dead? Contemporary, so called, artists compete to see whose work can be the most weird. What artists say about their work is now considered more important than the work itself - spin has infected every walk of life, it seems. In five hundred years time will art lovers be visiting museums to see this kind of thing in the same way that they do now to enjoy the beauty and craftsmanship of the paintings of the old masters?
- Richard Kennard, Welling
