The Turner Prize Shortlist 2025 begs a question

Today is Turner's 250th Birthday. Two days ago, the artists shortlisted for Turner Prize 2025 shortlist were announced.

What is The Turner Prize?

What the Tate says - other than in this year's press release - is

The Turner Prize is awarded to a British artist. 'British' can mean an artist working primarily in Britain or an artist born in Britain working globally. The prize focuses on their recent developments in British art rather than a lifetime's achievement.

Very many well known artists - or ones who have gone on to become very well known - have won The Turner Prize in the past. You can see a list here.

The award in 2025 is £55,000

• £25,000 goes to the winner and 
• £10,000 each goes to the other shortlisted artists.

In the past, the prize has been criticised for having criteria which are unfocused i.e. how do they get from the vast range of contemporary art development in the UK to those artists who are shortlisted for this prize.

Can one determine purpose from those shortlisted this year?

One of the world’s best-known prizes for the visual arts, the Turner Prize aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art.

They are:

• Nnena Kalu, 
• Rene Matić, 
• Mohammed Sami and 
• Zadie Xa.

Nnena Kalu, Conversations, Walker Art Gallery, installation view.
Courtesy of the Artist and Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
Photo credit: Pete Carr.

the unveiling of the short list often occasions a fierce debate about the artists’ relative merits and sometimes about the very definition of art. 

My initial inclination is to think somebody is trying to make a point. Which is all art needs to have a message. 

I don't think it does. I think art can be very many things. What it emphatically does not ALWAYS need to be is something with "a message" - and yet this is what jurors always seem to like.

In 2025, art seems to have become something which can only be celebrated if the artist is marginalised in some way - in terms of heritage or gender or ethnicity. Maybe this is connected to the fact that this year the Turner Prize is associated with Bradford as the City of Culture - and one might expect some sort of respect for the diverse communities that live in Bradford. 

But should it reflect just one city or the nation as a whole?

Of very great and increasing concern to me is that art favoured by jurors often seems NOT to connect in any way with vast numbers of the British public.
In turn, this can then be exploited by extreme right wing political parties which leads to increasing numbers of people voting for them. That way lies fascism and all that goes with that - as we are seeing playing out right now in the USA. That is very much NOT the way I want to see the UK go.

I'm also left wondering if the jurors selected their four shortlisted artists before or after this headline from the Evening Standard - Visitor numbers plunge at London art museums as Tate galleries lose 2.7 million in five years (25th March 2025) - which really shocked me! (There will be another blog post on this topic and why numbers have dropped - which is pertinent to my comments above).

But who decides?

It seems to me that which artistic developments get noticed rather depends on who is judging the prize - and which organisations they are associated with. 

This year the members of the Turner Prize 2025 jury are:

• Andrew Bonacina, Curator, Monsoon Art Collection
• Sam Lackey, Director, Liverpool Biennial. Prior to this she was Head of Collection and Exhibitions at the Whitworth (University of Manchester), where she was Senior Lead on the Leadership Team. Previously, she was curator at The Hepworth Wakefield (2010-16) where she delivered 40 exhibitions over 4 years as part of the team that opened the gallery in 2011 to critical acclaim.
• Priyesh Mistry, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Projects, National Gallery. Previously, he was Assistant Curator, International Art at Tate Modern where he specialised on art from South Asia for the collection and numerous exhibitions and commissions. He is a Trustee of Studio Voltaire, a member of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the British School at Rome and the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group led by the Mayor of London’s office
• Habda Rashid, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Fitzwilliam Museum. She was the Senior Curator at Create London in 2019 and stepped up to interim Artistic Director in 2021. Prior to this she was part of the curatorial department at the Whitechapel Gallery; taught on the MFA programmes at the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths University as well as MA in Curating at the Whitechapel Gallery.

The links embedded in their names are to their preferred social media outlets on Instagram or Twitter. I always find it's interesting to see what people post about - or not. It tells you a lot.

The jury is chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain, who said

The shortlist reflects the breadth of artistic practice today, from painting and sculpture to photography and installation, and each of the artists offers a unique way of viewing the world through personal experience and expression. On JMW Turner’s 250th birthday, I’m delighted to see his spirit of innovation is still alive and well in contemporary British art today, and I look forward to an unmissable exhibition of their work in Bradford this autumn.’

Asked by The Art Newspaper why artists were being listed for exhibitions outside the UK, he said....

Asked why the artists are mainly nominated for exhibitions held in institutions outside the UK, Alex Farquharson, Tate Britain director, said that “it is random but it also reflects international interest in UK artists”.

So change the criteria and make it for exhibitions inside the UK!

 

The Shortlisted Artists

Below are short bios I could glean from the internet, plus the reason they were shortlisted and an image of one of their works.

Nnena Kalu

• b. 1966, Glasgow
• Lives and works in London.
• a multimedia artist 
• she has developed her artistic practice at ActionSpace’s studio in Studio Voltaire (see Priyesh Mistry's bio above) since 1999. This is a progressive art studio in London supporting artists with intellectual/ learning disabilities.
• "she is driven by an instinctive and determined urge to build repeated marks and forms"

Nnena Kalu, Hanging Sculpture 1 to 10, installation view, 2024.
Photo courtesy of Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana.
Photo credit: Ivan Erofeev.

Nominated for her presentation as part of Conversations at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and Hanging Sculpture 1 to 10 at Manifesta 15, Barcelona. Kalu makes cocoon-like shapes out of paper and textiles which are then bound, layered and wrapped in brightly coloured cellophane and tape to create expressive hanging sculptural installations. Her work is rooted in a process of repeated gestures, as seen in her abstract swirling, drawings on paper. The jury commended her unique command of material, colour and gesture and her highly attuned responses to architectural space.

Rene Matić

• born in Peterborough, England in 1997.
• They completed a BA in Fine Art at Central St Martins, London in 2020.
• Matić works predominantly in photography but their practice also encompasses film, sculpture, textile, sound and writing. 
• Central to their artistic inquiry is a critical inspection of national identity and its associated symbolics encapsulated in everyday images.

Nominated for their solo exhibition AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH at CCA Berlin. Matić captures fleeting moments of joy in daily life, and expressions of tenderness within a wider political context. Their work includes highly personal photographs of family and friends in stacked frames, paired with sound, banners, and installation. The jury were struck by the artist’s ability to express concerns around belonging and identity, conveying broader experiences of a young generation and their community through an intimate and compelling body of work.

Rene Matić by Diana Pfammatter

Mohammed Sami

• Born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1984, Sami lives and works in London, UK.
• he grew up under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein
• Studied drawing and painting at the Institute of Fine Arts, Baghdad, 2005.
• graduated from Belfast School of Art in 2015 
• earned an MFA at Goldsmiths College, London, in 2018.

Nominated for his solo exhibition After the Storm at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. Sami is best known for his large-scale paintings which explore memory and loss. Sami layers pattern and colour to create haunting, dreamlike scenes, drawing on his life in Baghdad during the Iraq War and as a refugee in Sweden. Devoid of people, he paints empty landscapes, interiors and items of furniture as metaphors for absent bodies and their memories. The jury praised the artist’s powerful representation of war and exile, exhibited against the backdrop of Blenheim Palace.

Installation view Mohammed Sami, After the Storm,
Blenheim Art Foundation, Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, 9 July–6 October, 2024. Photographer: Tom Lindboe

Zadie Xa

• b. 1983, Vancouver, Canada and now based in London.
• a Korean-Canadian visual artist who combines sculpture, painting, light, sound, video, and performance to create immersive multi-media experiences. 
• Drawing inspiration from fields such as ecology, science fiction, and ancient religions, her work explores how beings imagine and inhabit their worlds.

Nominated for her presentation Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors Are Whales, and Earth Remembers Everything with Benito Mayor Vallejo at Sharjah Biennial 16. Interweaving painting, mural, textile and sound, Xa’s work focuses on the sea as a spiritual realm to explore traditions and folklore, speaking to a multitude of cultures. Her vibrant installation blended a soundscape with ethereal paintings, bojagi patchwork and an interactive sculpture of over 650 brass wind chimes inspired by Korean shamanic ritual bells. The jury felt that this cohesive work was a sophisticated development of Xa’s reflective and enchanting practice.

Zadie Xa with Benito Mayor Vallejo, Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors Are Whales, and Earth Remembers Everything, 2025.
Installation view. Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation.
Photo: Danko Stjepanovic

The Turner Prize Exhibition

This year the Turner Prize 2025 is part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, a year-long celebration of Bradford city and district – the fourth UK City of Culture following Derry/Londonderry, Hull and Coventry. 

Running from January to December, Bradford 2025 features performances, exhibitions, events and activities inspired by the district’s history and heritage, its breathtaking countryside and industrial past, as well as the local artists, creative organisations and the diverse communities who call Bradford home.

An exhibition of the work of the four shortlisted artists will be held 

• at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery 
• from 27 September 2025 to 22 February 2026 

The winner will be announced on 9 December 2025 at an award ceremony in Bradford.