Four for the Turner

Sunday May 18, 2008

Last week the shortlist of four artists was announced for the 2008 Turner Prize (to be awarded at the end of the year). This is the most obscure shortlist in the history of the prize, so nobody need feel any social embarrassment about not having heard of one, two, quite possibly any of the names.
The best known is Mark Leckey, who works with video and installation and is described as a cultural anthropologist, but you could say the same of all four; it's a very narrow shortlist. Leckey is known for filming his grungy flat reflected in the revolving surface of Jeff Koons's steel bunny and for his sullen animation of Viz cartoons. But a recent video about public statues is more promising, so perhaps he has deepened his wilfully shallow game.

Goshka Macuga curates her own mini-shows, one of which assembled works from the Tate's archive and collection to examine the methodology of archives and collections. Sounds enticing? I remember almost nothing about it except the school-project experience of making the connections between exhibits.
I freely admit I've only seen one work by Cathy Wilkes, whose female shop mannequins sit on loos and push buggies, but we can surely all believe Jennifer Higgie, one of the judges, when she says they are about disrupting 'an idealised idea of what women might be'. What else would they be about?

But my money is on Bangladeshi-born Runa Islam. Rickshaw drivers in suspended animation, Barcelona from the top of old cable cars and fairground rides, as if viewed through the eyes of the past: her films are quiet, intelligent, sensitive. Not exactly a show-stopper, perhaps, but the most interesting artist on the list.