Gateshead Installs Turner Prize 2011

Karla Black

A look at the Artists, the Location and the Logistics

The Tate and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art will open its doors to the press and public later this week for the Turner Prize 2011. The four artists who have been shortlisted this year are busy installing their work and the press pack preparing themselves for the long journey from London, where they have been covering Frieze week, to Gateshead where the next big event on the art calendar is located this year.

The artists Karla Black, Martin Boyce, Hilary Lloyd and George Shaw are diverse choices representing Painting ,Sculpture,Video and sound art. Established in 1984 The Turner Prize is awarded to a British artist under fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding 4 April 2011. The prize is intended to promote public discussion of new developments in contemporary British art and it is widely recognised as one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe and beyond. An award of £40,000 with £25,000 going to the winner and £5,000 each for the other shortlisted artists is on offer. Work by the artists in this exhibition will receive international exposure. The opening date is on Friday 21 October 2011, with the winner announced at BALTIC on Monday 5 December 2011.

This year also marks the 20th anniversary of Channel 4’s association with the Turner Prize. The broadcaster is sponsoring the prize fund of £40,000 and a dedicated programme featuring the live announcement of the winner will be broadcast on 5 December 2011. A series of short films about the shortlisted artists will feature on Channel 4 as well as additional programming on More4.

The Artists

Martin Boyce was born in Hamilton, Scotland in 1967. He was awarded a BA in 1990 and an MA in 1997, both from Glasgow School of Art. Solo exhibitions include A Library
of Leaves at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich (2010), No Reflections for the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) and That Blows Through Concrete Leaves, The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2007). Other solo exhibitions include Out of This Sun, Into This Shadow, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2008), For 1959 Capital Avenue, Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2002), Our Love is Like the Flowers, the Rain, the Sea and the Hours, Tramway, Glasgow (2002) and When Now is Night, Fruitmarket, Edinburgh (1999). Boyce’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions such as Modern British Sculpture, Royal Academy, London (2011), The New Décor, Hayward Gallery, (2010) and We Burn, We Shiver, Sculpture Centre, New York (2008). Martin Boyce engages with the historical legacy of Modernist forms and ideals to create deeply atmospheric installations drawing upon text and elements of design. His investigations will often re-stage the outside within the gallery space, evoking the urban landscape through precisely explored sculptural details. Steeped in an understanding of the concepts of Modernist design, his work draws upon its visual language with a complex repertoire of forms. Noted for his engagement with how these objects are produced, Boyce is interested in how their original political or aesthetic ethos changes over time. His meticulous sculptures bear out his imaginings for the alternative lives these objects might lead if created at a different moment.  Martin Boyce (43) lives and works in Glasgow. 

Karla Black was born in Alexandria, Scotland in 1972. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art where she received a BA in 1999, an MPhil in 2000 and an MA in 2004. Black’s work will be presented during the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) for Scotland + Venice. Solo exhibitions include Karla Black, Capitain Petzel, Berlin and Ten , Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nürnberg (2010); Karla Black: Sculptures with paintings by Bet Low (1924-2007), Inverleith House, Edinburgh, Karla Black, Modern Art Oxford and Karla Black, Kunstverein Hamburg  (2009); Karla Black, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2008) and Karla Black, Mary Mary, Glasgow (2006 and 2009). Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions such as All of this and nothing, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2011); British Art Show 7, Nottingham Contemporary (2010) and Material Intelligence, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2009). Karla Black brings together disparate and often unorthodox materials spreading, crumpling and layering them to make expansive floor-based works and suspended sculptures. Using both traditional art-making materials and those drawn from the everyday environment, she has incorporated powder-paint, plaster, crushed chalk, Vaseline, lipstick, topsoil, sugar paper, balsa wood, eye shadow, nail varnish and moisturiser. Her materials are rich in association but are chosen as much viscerally as they are psychologically. She selects things she “cannot help but use”, starting each work through some unconscious desire. Karla Black (38) lives and works in Glasgow. 

Hilary Lloyd
was born in Halifax 1964 and graduated from Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic in 1987. Major exhibitions of her work have been held at Raven Row, London (2010), Tramway, Glasgow, and Le Consortium, Dijon (both 2009), Munich Kunstverein (2006), Henry Moore Foundation Contemporary Projects, Venice Biennale, Venice, (2003), Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main (2000) and Chisenhale Gallery, London (1999). She has also had solo presentations at Galerie Neu, Berlin (2007 and 2010) and Sadie Coles HQ, London (2008). Hilary Lloyd makes work which engages in various ways with the moving image, encompassing video projections, films on monitors, and slide projections. She foregrounds technical equipment as a sculptural medium, prominently displaying the AV equipment on which her work is installed. Free from editing, Lloyd’s art is underpinned by a tension between the films’ seemingly casual making and often ambiguous subject matter, and the precise and almost obstructive positioning of the supporting equipment. Video projectors, DVD players and monitors are suspended on chrome columns, while broad tracks of black cabling run across the ceiling between the suspended projectors, ranks of DVD players and power supplies. These bulky objects engage actively with the architecture of the gallery, serving both to impede and choreograph visitors’ passage through the space. Hilary Lloyd (46) lives and works in London.

George Shaw was born in Coventry in 1966. He gained a BA from Sheffield Polytechnic in 1992 and an MA from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998. His solo exhibitions
include The Sly and Unseen Day, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2011), Looking for Baz, Shaz, Gaz and Daz, VOID, Derry (2010) Woodsman, Wilkinson Gallery, London (2009), the End of the World, Galerie Hussenot, Paris (2008), Poets Day, Centre d’Art, Contemporain, Geneva (2006), Ash Wednesday, Gallery (2005) and What I Did This Summer, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2003). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including, most recently, British Art Show 7, Nottingham Contemporary, Lust for Life & Dance of Death, Olbrict  Collection, Kunsthalle Krems, Krems, The Wiching Hour – Darkness and the Uncanny, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Crash, Homage to JG Ballard, Gagosian Gallery, London (all 2010).  George Shaw paints the landscape of his adolescent life. His scenes are all taken from within a half-mile radius of his childhood home on the Tile Hill estate, Coventry. Typical of post-war British social housing, the estate could belong to any city or have originated at any point between the early 1950s and the late 1970s, promoting the timeless, placeless quality of Shaw’s work. His paintings are always devoid of the human figure,
populated instead by seemingly arbitrary details of suburban infrastructure that he has recorded since the mid-1990s. Shaw paints exclusively using Humbrol enamel, more traditionally used by young model makers. Much can be read into his use of this material. It has a modesty that rejects art- historical or painterly grandeur, its colour is predetermined, staying closer to the shades of industry rather than nature, and it connotes solitary, meticulous, adolescent pastime. They are humble paints,’ Shaw says, ‘they’re not made for saying the great things in life like oil paint is made for – flesh and life and death and skulls and Jesus.’ George Shaw (44) lives and works in North Devon.  Visit Turner Prize 2011

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