Turner Prize artist explores Ashmolean collection

This year’s Turner Prize shortlist includes an artist chosen for an exhibition that explored the colonial history of collections held by Oxford's Ashmolean Museum.

Pio Abad’s work, which is on display at Tate Britain until 16 February alongside the three other shortlisted artists for the Turner Prize, combines drawings, sculptures and museum artefacts.

The exhibition at the Ashmolean was called To Those Sitting in Darkness, a reference to American writer Mark Twain’s satire 1901 satire, To the Person Sitting in Darkness, which criticised imperialism.

Abad’s work has a particular focus on the Philippines, where he was born and raised in an academic family who campaigned for justice in the 1970s and 1980s during a time of conflict and corruption under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

To Those Sitting in Darkness was part of Ashmolean Now, an initiative launched in summer 2023 that invited UK-based artists to create new responses to the museum’s collections.

Abad’s work at the Turner Prize exhibition includes a large drawing based on an object from the Ashmolean’s founding collection – Powhatan’s mantle, a deer-hide robe featuring shell beadwork ornaments. The item is from the 1600s, the first period of contact between Indigenous North American peoples and British colonists. The drawing, I Am Singing A Song That Can Only Be Born After Losing A Country, turns the underside of the robe into an imagined map of colonised lands.

The other artists shortlisted for Turner Prize are Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur and Delaine Le Bas. 

Johnson presents a series of works from her nominated exhibitions at The Courtauld Gallery, London, and Ortuzar Projects, New York, alongside new works. Using pastels, gouache, oil and watercolour, Johnson creates striking figurative portraits of Black women and men, often depicting family and friends. 

Kaur is showing works from her nominated exhibition at Tramway, Glasgow. The artist creates sculptures from gathered and remade objects, each animated through an immersive sound composition. Items including family photos, a harmonium, Axminster carpet and kinetic worship bells reflect the artist’s upbringing in Glasgow.

Le Bas presents a restaging of her nominated exhibition at the Secession, Vienna. For her Turner Prize show, the artist has transformed the gallery into a monumental immersive environment filled with painted fabrics, costume, film and sculpture.

This is the 40^th anniversary of the Turner Prize, which was created in 1994 to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art.

It is named after the painter JMW Turner (1775-1851) and is awarded each year to a British artist for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work.

The winner of the Turner Prize will be awarded £25,000 with £10,000 awarded to each of the other shortlisted artists.

The members of the Turner Prize 2024 jury are Rosie Cooper, director of Wysing Arts Centre; Ekow Eshun, writer, broadcaster and curator; Sam Thorne, director general and CEO at Japan House London; and Lydia Yee, curator and art historian. The jury is chaired by Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain.

Turner Prize 2024 is supported by The John Browne Charitable Trust and The Uggla Family Foundation. 

The Turner Prize exhibition is curated by Linsey Young, a curator of contemporary British art at Tate and Amy Emmerson Martin, assistant curator, contemporary British Art, with Sade Sarumi, curatorial assistant, contemporary British art and Laura Laing, exhibition assistant.

The January/February issue of Museums Journal will include a feature on the 40^th anniversary of the Turner Prize.