Charlotte Prodger wins Turner Prize for works on gender identity
Charlotte Prodger has won the “political” 2018 Turner Prize for film work examining landscapes and gender identity shot on an iPhone.
The Glasgow-based artist has been awarded the annual prize of £25,000 for her films, which made use of clips shot on her smartphone overlaid with musing reflections on subjects surrounding “queer identity”.
Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie presented the award at a ceremony held at Tate Britain in London.
Prodger, 44, has been hailed for her work BRIDGIT, which was shot using her phone, and for the multi-format film Stoneymollan Trail, exhibited at Bergen Kunsthall.
The exhibit impressed prize judges for the way it explores “lived experience as mediated through technologies and histories”.
Prodger, who was born in Bournemouth and studied at Goldsmith’s, told Tate following her nomination for the prize: “I was thinking about the importance of self-determination to histories of queer struggle.
“This is an encroachment on queer spaces, which is in part due to the commodification of queer aesthetic.”
Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, said: “It’s a political Turner Prize. I think it’s inevitable that there will be interest in artwork that says things in a very timely way.
“In terms of the winner, it’s one that seems to make a lot of points for a younger generation.
“It deals with gender as unfixed, as something fluid, as something not always conforming to society’s norms.”
Tate, which hosts the Turner Prize, announced: “The jury admired the painterly quality BRIDGIT and the attention it paid to art history.
“The work meanders through disparate associations ranging from JD Sports and standing stones to 1970s lesbian separatism and Jimi Hendrix’s sound recordist.”
Four nominees were shortlisted for their filmic entries, all using moving images to explore issuesTurner Prize judges deemed “timely and urgent”.
No sculpture or painting was featured on this year’s shortlist.
Collective Forensic Architecture, who argued they are not artists, were shortlisted for The Long Duration Of A Split Second.
It is a visual investigation into the death of a villager in Israel and an examination of state violence created by the group of lawyers, architects and coders.
Bangladeshi-British artist Naeem Mohaiemen made the shortlist for his works Tripoli Cancelled and Two Meetings And Funeral, which part explore legacies of colonialism and failed left-wing politics in Asia.
New Zealand artist Luke Willis Thompson’s film work displayed the familial grief of police shooting victims in the US, including the footage made by the partner of the slain Philando Castile.
