Who Are the 2023 Turner Prize Nominees?

Four artists will prepare works for an exhibition opening at Towner Eastbourne on 28 September.

Tate Britain has announced the four artists nominated for this year's Turner Prize, Britain's most prestigious contemporary art award. They are Jesse Darling, Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim, and Barbara Walker.

Each artist was nominated on the strength of exhibitions held the previous year, with Turner Prize judge Melanie Keen noting that the human is centred in each of those chosen.

Jesse Darling was nominated for two solo exhibitions: No Medals, No Ribbons at Modern Art Oxford and Enclosures at Camden Art Centre. Often evoking the inevitability of the body's failure, Darling works across sculpture, installation, moving image, and performance.

Discussing both exhibitions with Ocula Magazine in 2022, Darling noted that 'to acknowledge our common vulnerability at the level of the mortal body is a way for me to think about trying to care for each other'.

Ghislaine Leung was nominated for the solo exhibition Fountains at Simian, Copenhagen. Leung describes her work as 'score-based', whereby the institution showing her work not only displays it, but performs the work to a specific set of conditions. The exhibition space, duration, location and organising partners can all be impacted by conditions set by the artist.

For Fountains, the score included: 'a fountain installed in the exhibition space to cancel sound'. Leung utilised the public water feature above the subterranean gallery to channel a permanent cascade of water into the space. The jury was impressed by Leung's rethinking of the gallery space and the strong concept behind the work.

Rory Pilgrim was nominated for RAFTS at the Serpentine and Barking Town Hall, and a live performance of the work at London's Cadogan Hall.

Social change is central to Pilgrim's work, influenced by the origins of activist, feminist and socially engaged art. The second chapter of RAFTS was created during the Covid-19 pandemic, where Pilgrim collaborated with local communities in London's Barking and Dagenham boroughs to reflect on times of change and struggle.

In particular, the jury praised Pilgrim for exemplifying social practice and reflecting the strength of the relationship between artist and community.

Barbara Walker was nominated for her presentation Burden of Proof at Sharjah Biennial 15. Examining the impact of the Windrush Scandal, Walker layers large-scale portraits of 8 individuals with reproductions of the identity papers that prove their right to live in the UK.

Her work examines contemporary stories rooted in historical circumstance, foregrounding racial identity, exclusion and power in her practice. In particular, the jury recognised the profound tenderness and intimacy of Walker's work despite their monumental scale.

The four nominees will present exhibitions of their work at Towner Eastbourne in Sussex from 28 September 2023 to 14 January 2024. The £25,000 prize winner will be announced on 5 December 2023.

'Towner Eastbourne is one of Britain's most exciting galleries, with a fantastically diverse exhibition programme and world-class collection of modern British and international contemporary art,' said Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain and Chair of the Turner Prize jury.

He also noted that the announcement coincides with the first public day of Isaac Julien, What Freedom is to Me in Tate Britain. Julien was nominated for the 2001 Turner Prize, although a copyright dispute with choreographer Javier de Frutos was widely reported in the weeks leading to the 2001 exhibition.

That Turner Prize will take place at Towner in 2023 as part of the gallery's centenary celebrations.

Recent winners of the Turner Prize include Veronica Ryan in 2022, Belfast's Array Collective in 2021, and Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Tai Shani, and Oscar Murillo, who shared the prize in 2019. —[O]