Turner Prize 1997: Generating art debate
When the shortlist was announced in June 1997, some critics asserted that the all female line up was an act of overt political correctness in response to the 1996 all-male shortlist, which provoked fierce criticism. Meanwhile other claim that it is simply a reflection of the best new artists on the scene. Indeed, that is exactly how Nicholas Serota defended their final selection for the shortlist. In the catalogue forward he writes of the selection: "It answers the simple questions, what were the exhibitions, which were the artists whose work had the strongest and most enduring impact this year on this group of individuals, the jury?"
The three remaining artists who exhibited work at the Tate were Christine Borland, Angela Bulloch and Cornelia Parker.
Christine Borland
Christine Borland, 33, displayed three works that explore identity regarding medical research, mortality, and history. Originally displayed at the 1997 Munster Sculpture Project in Germany, The Dead Teach the Living (1997) is a group of computer-reconstructed heads cast in white plaster that show different racial stereotypes, which raises questions on how science has been used to dehumanize racial groups. After a True Story— Giant and Fairy Tales (1997), a new work, presented a negative impression of the skeletal remains of an 18th century dwarf and contrasted them with a 19th century giant. Strangely defined by dust on a glass shelf and cast as shadows on the wall beneath, they represent physical beginning and end. In Phantom Twins (1997), leather "dolls" containing real foetal skeletons, used to demonstrate childbirth to medical students in the 18th century, inspire delicate images of birth and death using plastic replica skulls. Exhibited between the two gallery spaces in softly lit, flanking niches, the Twins evoked a spatially tense and symbolic memorial.
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Angela Bulloch, foreground: Superstructure with satellites (1997), background: Untitled (Rules series) (1997), dimensions variable.
Angela Bulloch
The youngest of the finalists, Angela Bulloch, 31, has previously exhibited work in Europe, the United States, and Japan, in addition to Britain. She offers color, playfulness, fun, and a rethink of behavior, roles, and our relationship to technology. Exhibiting a large-scale construction of primary-colored soft furnishings, she turned the gallery into an IKEA-like playroom seating area for children and adults. Bringing a much needed rethink on art and exhibition spaces, and indoctrinated adult behavior, the viewers’ inhibited reactions were as informative as the work itself. A sign informed viewers that they could touch, sit on, and, in essence, have fun with art—"However, please do not sit or climb on the vertical doughnuts due to electrical equipment inside." Videogame sounds were set off when walking around the piece. Fusing art and design, the work, at the same time, questions their division.
In her Rules Series, Angela Bulloch heightens our awareness of the wide variety of regulations affecting our lives, anything from those for bar strippers to those in the House of Commons, thereby questioning their role in society. Meanwhile, her sensor-triggered drawing machines illustrate movement, as a mechanically operated pen creates line drawings and shows the limitations of rule-governed options for the design, alluding to those within certain human constructions.
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Cornelia Parker. Mass (Colder, Darker, Matter), (1997). Charcoal retrieved from a church struck by lightning, Lytle, Texas, USA. 366 x 320 x 320 cm.
Cornelia Parker
Instead of mechanical movement, Cornelia Parker, 41, offers a fascination with materials and form, continued questions about art, and an occasional blast. In work comparable to cartoon death, Parker organized the charred remains of a church struck by lightning in Texas. Hung from the ceiling, Mass (Colder Darker Matter) (1997) appeared like a ghostly apparition in the implied form of a cube. Earlier, she convinced the British Army to blow up a garden shed and organized the debris around a light bulb with an awe-inspiring sense of space, movement, shadow, and positive/negative form with Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991). "With the garden shed, I was the person who killed off the object, whereas the church was killed off by lightning—and the piece is resurrected in the gallery—like a cartoon character," says Parker. Thirty Pieces of Silver (1988-1989) resulted from approximately 1,000 silver objects steamrollered and hung on wire in their metamorphosis. In addition to Mass (Colder Darker Matter), Cornelia Parker exhibited other work from her recent show at the Chapter Gallery in Cardiff, Wales, including Colt-45 guns in an embryonic stage, incinerated cocaine, black lacquer residue from cutting the grooves in vinyl records, and hair clippings, presenting "the secret lives of objects and materials."
Previous winners of the Turner Prize have included Damien Hirst (1995) for Mother and Child Divided–a cow and a calf cut in half and preserved in formaldehyde—and Rachel Whiteread (1993), who was the first woman to win the Prize, for her conceptual and evocative work, House—the cast of the inside of a terrace house. In response to suggestions that the Turner Prize is deliberately controversial a Tate spokesperson claimed controversy is largely generated by the British media rather than the works themselves, but added, "The fact is it [the Turner Prize] generates debate, raises the public profile of the Tate, and brings more people to contemporary art."
In the light of this, is it significant that all the shortlisted artists were women? Perhaps not, but the Tate has already recorded record attendance figures for the 1997 exhibition.
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