OFFSET recently took a trip to the to the damp but culturally vibrant city of Glasgow to catch the final weekend of The Turner Prize. The weather in Glasgow was incredibly bitter that weekend so we wrapped up in our warmest woolies and hopped on a train to Tramway to catch OFFSET 2016 speakers and Turner Prize 2015 winners Assemble.
2015 sees a year of firsts for the Turner Prize. Assemble were chosen for recognition as the most outstanding British-based artist (or art collective) under fifty years of age marking the first time that a group of artists have been nominated. They are also notable as architects so it is the first time that design has been introduced to the line-up. Thirdly, supporting nominations were, for the first time, represented by a trio of female artists Nicole Wermers, Bonnie Camplin and Janice Kerbel.
We arrived at the Tramway just in time for a tour of the exhibition. Our guide opened with a brief introduction to the Turner Prize’s 1984 inception from its origins in the Tate Modern to the Tate Britain in 2014 achieved by non-other than Irish photographer Duncan Campbell. Irish art has permeated throughout with former NCAD and IMMA director Declan McGonagle being selected as the first curator to be considered for the award in 1987, while in 2013 NCAD lecturer and art critic Declan Long was chosen as juror for the award.
The exhibition began with a rendition of Slip created by multi-disciplinary artist Janice Kerbel, who self taught music composition in order to create her audio-event series Doug (2014). Afterwards we stopped at Nicole Wermers’ dual sculptural piece Infrastruktur (2015) which combined elements of public and private space, her Marcel Breuer/fur hybrids made me fight impulses to climb inside for protection from the chilly Glaswegian weather.
Bonnie Camplin’s research based piece Patterns (2015) employed a range of tools to support five videos at the centrepiece, videos consisted of personal experiences ranging from the extraordinary to psychologically traumatic events. A frame of tables surrounded the core exhibiting publications and print outs from psycho-analogies by Freud to literature about the occult and the afterworld. Camplin’s work dissected aspects of storytelling and documentation to analyse whether our perceptions of the odd and extraordinary are as strange as we believe, or if we are just unaccepting of the unfamiliar.
Finally, back to our winners Assemble, the 18 piece collective of artists and designers who joined forces with the Toxteth community in Liverpool during the summer of 2015 to create a new social enterprise. The team used the Granby Workshop (2015) initiative to regenerate the area and broadcast local creativity and productivity.
The reproduction of Assemble’s Granby studio was an entirely interactive installation enveloping the viewer into the make-shift workshop space offering a warm welcome from the harsh conditions outside. Assemble told the story of the Granby project by showing video pieces filmed in the original Toxteth workshop and displayed a collection of Granby products, which can be picked up, studied and purchased by Turner Prize attendees.
What is instrumental about the 2015 win is that the Granby Workshop project aroused discussion between artists and designers, not to mention the socio-economic development that this project has created and in turn highlighted to the Art-world.
Post-attendance reviews varied between members of my group but we collectively agreed that Assemble’s win definitely transformed from the perception of a designed production space to a project that has enhanced the lives of a community in Toxteth, an installation that warmed attendees cold hands and hearts and highlighted an important topic of urban neglect and regeneration to the public.
You can find out more about Assemble’s journey to the Turner Prize in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre this April for OFFSET 2016, tickets are still available and can be snapped up here.
Words by Jane Gleeson | Photos by Eleanor White