The future is female
Congratulations to Lubaina Himid, who won the Turner Prize 2017 last night. The Turner Prize started in 1984, and Himid’s award takes the number of women winners to 8. Here we look back at other female Turner Prize Winners.
Helen Marten (2016)
Marten is a 32 year old English artist whose interests spans sculpture, video and installation art. She attended the Oxford’s Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art between the years 2005-2008 after completing an art foundation course at the Central Saint Martins in 2004. She is notable for using handmade and found objects such as coins, shoe soles, marbles and cotton buds to create pieces of artwork and poetic puzzles. Marten has participated in several notable solo and selected group exhibitions. She won the Turner Prize in 2016 for one of her installation art works.
Laure Prouvost (2013)
Laure was born in 1978 in Croix, France. After relocating to the UK, Prouvost enrolled at the Central St. Martins, London to study film at the age of 18, and subsequently attended Goldsmiths, University of London. She is known for installation, collage and film and has exhibited at Tate Britain and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. In 2013, Prouvost won the Turner Prize for her work, Wantee which is an installation describing a fictional connection between her grandfather and artist Kurt Schwitters. The Turner Prize Panel described Wantee as “outstanding for its complex and courageous combination of images and objects in a deeply atmospheric environment.”
Elizabeth Price (2012)
Price is a 50 year old British artist notable for video and installation arts. Elizabeth’s rise to prominence could be described as that of ash becoming gold if her bad grades at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, an institution which would later hire her as a teacher is anything to go by. She won the Turner Prize in 2012 for a 20 minute video installation, The Woolsworths Choir of 1979. Apart from her knack for arts, Price also has a fetish for music, with Amelia Fletcher; she cofounded Talulah Gosh, a successful Indie Band, which she later left for “hating to be on the stage.”
Susan Philipsz (2010)
Philipsz is a Scottish artist born to a half-Burmese father in 1965. She studied for her baccalaureate in Sculpture at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee and subsequently earned a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Ulster in 1994. Though originally a sculptor, Philipsz is notable for her sound installations which are majorly aimed at triggering memories and emotions. She won the 2010 edition of the Turner Prize for her piece Lowlands Away making her the first person to win the award for an aural work. Philipsz got appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2014.
Tomma Abts (2006)
Abts was born a German in 1967, but moved to London in 1995 where she has since lived. She is a visual artist notable for creating oil paintings without a preconceived idea. Her non-representational designs are often made of repetitive elements involving layered, complex shapes that appear almost tangible with added shadows and a sense of depth. Abts became the first female painter to win the Turner Prize in 2010. The Tate Gallery described her as an artist enriching the language of abstract painting through her compelling canvasses.
Gillian Wearing (1997)
Wearing was born in Birmingham in 1963 and is a renowned conceptual artist. Since her graduation from Chelsea College of Art, she has been involved in photography and video which she uses to document everyday life, bordering on individual identity within public and private spaces. Wearing won the Turner Prize in 1997 for 60 minutes Silence, which is a video involving actors in police uniforms standing still for an hour! She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2011.
Rachel Whiteread (1993)
54 years old Whiteread is an English artist notable for producing sculpture in the form of casts. She bagged a Bachelor of Arts (B.A) in painting from Brighton Polytechnic in 1985 and subsequently a Masters of Arts (M.A) in sculpture at the Slade school of Art, University College, London in 1987. Whiteread’s works include Ghost, Embankment, Charity Box and more. She became the first female recipient of the Turner Prize in 1993 for her work, House, which is the cast of the interior of an entire Victorian terrace house.