Scottish artist Jasleen Kaur wins Turner Prize 2024 after putting giant doily on Ford Escort
4 December 2024, 08:25
Jasleen Kaur has won this year’s Turner Prize for her exhibition which included a vintage Ford Escort covered in a giant doily.
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The 38-year-old’s Alter Altar exhibition at Glasgow's contemporary arts venue Tramway also used worship bells and Irn-Bru to celebrate the Scottish Sikh community.
The Turner Prize, named after the British painter JMW Turner, is the most high-profile award in British art and this year it celebrates its 40th anniversary.
Previous winners include Anish Kapoor, Steve McQueen, Gillian Wearing, Antony Gormley, Grayson Perry, Jeremy Deller, Helen Marten and Veronica Ryan.
Kaur was presented with the £25,000 prize by actor James Norton at Tate Britain on Tuesday evening after beating fellow shortlisted nominees Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson and Delaine Le Bas, who will receive £10,000 each.
Kaur said she wasn't aware of the Turner Prize while growing up, saying she didn't have the "cultural access".
She said "I have had so many messages today from people from the local Sikh community and from folk that I grew up with.
"Something like this that is so visible means a lot to a lot of different people.
"It means something to different groups and I'm up of representing all of them".
Kaur's exhibition included family photos, an Axminster carpet, a vintage car covered in a giant doily and kinetic handbells.
Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain and jury chair, paid tribute to Kaur’s ability to “create amazing, enchanted environments out of the most prosaic objects”.
He said there was “a sense of life” to the objects, which “move from the specifics of Kaur’s own background to big diasporic themes of cross-cultural identity, specifically South Asian and Scottish, and within that Sikh and secular”.
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Meanwhile, the judges were impressed by the "considered way in which she weaves together the personal, political and spiritual in her exhibition".
Kaur was praised for gathering "different voices through unexpected and playful combinations of material".
The judges said Alter Altar "reflects upon everyday objects, animating them through sound and music to summon community and cultural inheritance", resulting in a "visual and aural experience that suggests both solidarity and joy".
Kaur grew up in Glasgow’s Sikh community in Pollokshields and has previously described her practice as “making sense of what is out of view or withheld”.
She studied silversmithing and jewellery at Glasgow School of Art in 2008, before moving to London to study at the Royal College of Art the following year.
Her work has previously been showcased at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her short film Yoorop showed an account of Europe using footage from popular Indian cinema.
