Scottish artist Jasleen Kaur who put doily on a car wins Turner Prize 2024

The Scotsman

Scottish artist Jasleen Kaur who put doily on a car wins Turner Prize 2024   Judges praise “ability to gather different voices through unexpected and playful combinations of material”  Scottish artist Jasleen Kaur has won the Turner Prize for her solo exhibition Alter Altar, which includes an installation of a car with a giant doily on it.   Happy Valley actor James Norton announced the winner in a ceremony held at Tate Britain on Tuesday evening.   The five jury members chose Kaur for “her ability to gather different voices through unexpected and playful combinations of material, from Irn-Bru to family photographs and a vintage Ford Escort, locating moments of resilience and possibility”.   Kaur, who was born in Glasgow but lives and works in London, used her speech to advocate for the people in Palestine.   The 38-year-old said she wanted to “echo the calls of the protesters outside” who had gathered after an open letter urged the Tate to cut ties with “organisations complicit in what the UN and ICJ are finally getting closer to saying is a genocide of the Palestinian people”.   “This is not a radical demand,” Kaur said on stage.   “This should not risk an artist’s career or safety. We’re trying to build consensus that the ties to these organisations are unethical, just as artists did with Sackler,” she said, referencing the family linked to the opioid epidemic.   “I’ve been wondering why artists are required to dream up liberation in the gallery but when that dream meets life we are shut down.   “I want the separation between the expression of politics in the gallery and the practice of politics in life to disappear.   “I want the institution to understand that if you want us inside, you need to listen to us outside.”   Kaur concluded her speech by calling for a ceasefire, adding: “Free Palestine.”   BBC reporter Katie Razzall had to apologise to viewers after Kaur used a swear word in her speech.   The artist was nominated for an exhibition that was held at the Tramway in her home city last year.   The display, a series of installations exploring religious identities, politics and history, makes heavy use of different sounds, embedded into the exhibition by way of worship bells, Sufi Islamic devotional music, Indian harmonium, and pop tracks.   This year the arts prize, named after British painter JMW Turner, which awards £25,000 to its winner, is celebrating its 40th anniversary.   Established in 1984, the prize is awarded each year to a British artist for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work.   Previous recipients include sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor (1991), artist Damien Hirst (1995), and filmmaker Sir Steve McQueen (1999).   In 2025, the prize will be presented in Bradford at Cartwright Hall art gallery, marking the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Jocelyn Corr. I am an artist and I'm from Glasgow. I grew up in Pollock Shields

00:19just round the corner. We are in my exhibition, The Tramway. A lot of my influences come from

00:27everyday life, so you'll see in the space there's lots of materials that are recognisable or

00:33familiar. There's like really domestic carpet that also might make you think of a worship space.

00:41There's clothing, there's toilet roll, there's balloons, there's posters, there's like a lot of

00:48just detritus from everyday life. I love playing with these seemingly like valueless materials

00:53and because they hold such strong narratives. A lot of my influences also come from different

01:03histories, whether that's like personal histories or histories that are connected to my heritage or

01:10lineage and also the current state of affairs in the UK or India or within the diaspora community

01:20today. So yeah, I think those are the kinds of things that I am thinking about in this work.

01:26So the print behind me is a blown up family photograph of different family members standing

01:34by a car. I think it's a BMW. But there's a kind of, I've got a bit of a collection of these photos

01:41and it's not unusual, I don't think, of family members posing in front of cars,

01:47sometimes not even their own car. And so I don't know, the car is a bit of a symbol of like desire

01:55and I'm kind of making it and it's a really like masculine object as well. And then you've got

02:03these like bits of roti, like chapati, masking bits of faces that my mum made actually. So there's

02:10a bit of collision of materials going on there and objects that are maybe associated with like

02:16masculine and feminine. And then it's tinted in an orange colour which is to match iron brew.

02:23It's the diet, right? Like these are the things that going to Temple growing up or going to

02:29Gurdwara growing up, we'd have blessed food and iron brew was part of that. So it's these

02:34little collisions and memories and things that might not fit the narrative, but they are the

02:40narrative. And I think that happens a lot in the show. So the car was actually made for the British

02:46Textile Biennial originally in 2021. And I really wanted to restage it again and have, it plays

02:54sound, so I really wanted to have time to spend more time with the sound. It's my dad's

03:02first car, it's not the actual first car, but he talks about this red Ford Escort. So I managed to

03:07find a red Ford Escort on eBay that had no engine and was affordable within the budget. And again

03:14you've got this like layering of objects together, like the roti and the iron brew. You've got this

03:20like mushing together of the giant doily, which doesn't quite make sense on top of a car. None of

03:25it really makes sense, but you're chucking things together that you wouldn't expect. The soundtrack,

03:31you've got this like subwoofer in the boot, which like booms this bass. All of these things are like

03:38references to growing up and what the car was for us. It was like a place to listen to music

03:48really, really loud. And so you've got this kind of collage of soundtracks that come in and out,

03:55and it sounds like the car is moving away from you as you hear bits of snippets of soundtracks.

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