TURNER PRIZE 2010

Last week [DoR] took the yearly pilgrimage to Tate Britain to have a little look at the Turner Prize. There has been some quite skeptical reviews of this years prize, namely Dexter Dalwood, whose paintings have been heavily criticized.

Dexter Dalwood's large, flat imaginary landscapes and interiors exist to evoke narrative of famous figures or celebrity. Rather than using figurative painting Dalwood references politics, art history and popular culture, using collage and block colour to translate his idea of character.

The Otolith Group, a london based collaborative project founded by Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Saga, create film works questioning historic and cultural documentation using found material. You are able to take the space in which The Otolith Group presents as an installation in itself, the room is filled with monitors, reading material, a conference table and screens a large scale film, Otolith III.

The Scottish artist Susan Philipsz, uses her own recorded voice to explore notions of space and environment. For the prize Philipsz recorded different found versions of a Scottish folk song which are projected together in one space. The sound installation is haunting and evocative but it left me feeling bored and thinking it did not belong alongside the other nominees.

Angela de la Cruz was nominated for the Turner Prize after the success of her solo show at the Camden Arts Centre. The spanish artist creates bold monochrome canvases only to attack them, ripping, sawing and crushing her stretchers to produce a hybrid of painting and sculpture. Her work is the perfect example of humorous work, at the same time exploring colour, surface and form, the crucial elements that make good art.

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/turnerprize2010/default.shtm