It’s art, not sport – no-one should win, says prize favourite

THE Scottish artist whose soaring career has turned her into a favourite for Britain’s biggest art prize said yesterday she would “go away and hide” if she won.

Sculptor Karla Black claimed that forcing nominated artists to compete with one another for the Turner Prize ruined their work by treating it like sport, and said she didn’t believe any artist should be chosen as winner.

With four radically different artists unveiling their work at the Turner Prize show in Gateshead yesterday, Black has emerged as a leading contender to win when the award is announced in early December. But she doesn’t relish the idea of picking up the prestigious prize.

“I don’t care,” she said. “And in some ways, it could be damaging. It could be worse to win. All I’m interested in is going home to my bed, and if I win I might have to stay there.”

Black, 38, is one of two Scots in the running for this year’s prize. The other is Martin Boyce, who, like Black, is a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art. Their work went on show in the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, along with fellow nominees Hilary Lloyd and George Shaw, both English.

The Turner Prize, established in 1984, is awarded to a British artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition or presentation of their work. This is only the second time the Turner artists have been showcased outwith London, and the first time away from a Tate Gallery, after a single showing at Tate Liverpool in 2008.

The four artists’ work, in four separate large white gallery rooms, could not be more different.

Black has filled her space from wall to wall with giant, lightweight sculptures of paper and polythene, coloured with pale coloured chalks that have become her trademark. A hole was cut in the gallery wall to bring in the six-metre rolls of paper she used to make them – along with 600 boxes of playground chalks.

Boyce’s work, by contrast, features a concrete and wood table of hard-edged lines, and a hanging ceiling of abstract white metal leaves. Everything in his room – from ventilation grilles to the lettering on a wall piece – is inspired by a modernist artwork of four concrete trees made back in 1925.

Next door to Black’s work are the paintings of George Shaw, realistic but bleak landscapes of everyday scenes painted in Humbrol enamels, more commonly used on model aircraft. One, of a road with fenced fields and a bin, is called Landscape with Dog Shit Bin. A shop closed with metal shutters down, is titled Shut Up and a darkened garbage dump The Same Old Crap.

In a fourth room, overlooking the Tyne, artist Hilary Lloyd is presenting her video work, from Moon, with multiple split-screen images of a flickering, moving full moon, to Floor, with three projections of a wooden floor.

Black’s career has soared in the past three years, from art fair prizes to representing Scotland in the Venice Biennale, the world’s biggest contemporary art showcase, this summer. Her work has been snapped up by galleries in Scotland, London, Zurich and Los Angeles. Her “ephemeral”, seemingly weightless sculptures, made from the cheap kind of art materials more commonly used by children, are hailed by critics as a game-changer for visual art. When the four Turner nominees were named earlier this year, she emerged as the bookies’ favourite.

The Turner Prize, and nominations for it, have helped make the names of artists such as Tracey Emin, while Scottish artists, from Douglas Gordon to Richard Wright, have ranked among the winners.

Black’s main work for the show, Doesn’t Care in Words, begins with Cellophane curtains and includes two giant, fragile, paint-encrusted paper sculptures, one of which visitors can walk through. “It’s as close as you can come to standing inside a painting,” was the verdict of Baltic curator Laurence Sillars. “It embraces you and offers the potential for escape.”

Standing by the sculptures, Black was asked what she would do if she won. “I will go away and hide,” she said. “I will get my head down and make some work. I don’t want any sort of celebrity, absolutely not. I think it’s really good if people don’t know what an artist looks like. You get too concentrated on the person.”

After four artists are nominated, there shouldn’t be the “extra weird pressure” of choosing between them, she said.

“Everyone’s work is really good, and it totally ruins it. It is not a sport. Is there a winner? I don’t believe that, I’ve seen the list of winners; in 27 years, there’s four women. Do I believe those men are all the winners? No.”

Boyce said he and other artists had joked about the contrasts between them. He went on: “I think there’s a really great line-up, all the artists are quite strong. In what each person does, there’s a precision, a clarity, of the things they are interested in. It’s a really interesting combination.”

Boyce has a formidable track record of his own. Current work ranges from public outdoor art projects in France to a collaboration with the Scottish film-maker David MacKenzie and improvisation musician Raymond MacDonald, scheduled for Glasgow’s Tramway gallery next year. “The Turner Prize carries that cultural weight, it’s a recognised brand and means something to the public. If you are going to take part in it, you have to take everything that goes with it,” he said.

l The contenders are on show at the Baltic Centre until 8 January.