Turner Prize 2012 winner is Elizabeth Price at Tate Britain.

Turner Prize 2012 winner is Elizabeth Price at Tate Britain.

David Franchi – Monday, 24th December 2012.

“The jury applauded the four nominated artists’ commitment”

Elizabeth Price, The Woolworths Choir of 1979 (2012) © The artist and MOT International, London

The Turner Prize 2012 has been awarded to Elizabeth Price. During a live broadcast on Channel 4, at Tate Britain, the last 19th December, it was an unexpected announcement, presented by Jude Law.

This year’s prize fund, supported by Channel 4, is £40,000 with £25,000 going to the winner and £5,000 each for the other shortlisted artists who for 2012 were: Spartacus Chetwynd, Luke Fowler, Paul Noble and Elizabeth Price.

The Turner Prize jury applauded the four nominated artists’ commitment and the strengths of their diverse artistic practices. They awarded the prize to Elizabeth Price for her solo exhibition at BALTIC, Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. The Jury admired the seductive and immersive qualities of Price’s video trilogy which reflects the ambition that has characterised her work in recent years. They were impressed by the way Price creates a rhythmic and ritualistic experience through film installations which combine different material and technical vocabularies ranging from archival footage and popular music videos to advertising.

Elizabeth Price presents her video installation “The Woolworths Choir of 1979” (2012). Comprising three parts, the video brings together distinct bodies of material into a dissonant assembly; photographs of church architecture, internet clips of pop performances and news footage of a notorious fire in a Woolworths furniture department in 1979. Price weaves together existing archives of text, image and sound to create video installations that drift between social history and fantasy.

The other shortlisted Spartacus Chetwynd restages key moments from her nominated exhibition “Odd Man Out” (2011) which

Paul Noble, Villa Joe (Front View) 2005-6 © Private Collection, courtesy the Gagosian Gallery

addressed ideas of democracy and the consequences of decision making. In live performances that run from 12:00-17:00 daily visitors are invited to present themselves to ‘the oracle’ for a pronouncement on their future actions and to watch a puppet show of the tale of Jesus and Barrabas. Footage from past performances are also included. Drawing from art history, literature, film and television, Chetwynd’s carnivalesque live events dissolve the boundary between spectator and participant.

Luke Fowler, instead, exhibits his nominated film “All Divided Selves” (2011), an exploration of the ideas and legacy of Scottish psychiatrist RD Laing (1927-89). The film presents a rich collage of captivating archival material, in which the viewer becomes an inadvertent witness to psychiatric sessions. Fowler also displays a series of diptych format photographs, “Two Frame Film” (2006), reminiscent of film montage.

Paul Noble exhibits a body of work from his elaborate drawing project depicting the fictional place, Nobson Newtown. Spanning sixteen years of work, a range of the painstaking pencil drawings are brought together from the very first in the series, “Paul’s Palace” (1996), to a recent large-scale drawing not seen before. Starting with a word drawn at the centre, the letters are then ‘illuminated’ with a complex web of visual narratives and delivered with a hint of deadpan humour. New sculptures made in speckled black and white marble echo the monochromatic forms within the drawings.

The Turner Prize 2012 is awarded to a British artist under fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding 24th April 2012. (The term British applies to all artists working in the United Kingdom and to British-born artists who may be working abroad.) The Turner Prize was established in 1984 by the Patrons of New Art and is intended to promote public discussion of new developments in contemporary British art.

The members of the Turner Prize 2012 Jury were: Andrew Hunt, Director, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea; Heike Munder, Director, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Mark Sladen, Director, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. The Chair of the Jury is Penelope Curtis, Director, Tate Britain. Sadly, jury member Michael Stanley, Director, Modern Art Oxford, died on21 September 2012.

From 2nd October 2012 until 6th January 2013.

At Tate Britain, Pimlico, London.