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 turner prize 2007
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.The Turner Prize takes a trip along the Mersey. Love it or hate it, it’s that time of year again when four British contemporary artists under 50 spark debate in the annual Turner Prize. And for the first time in its 23-year history the exhibition is heading out of London, bound for Tate Liverpool. Obviously this extraordinary move is to rouse interest in Liverpool as the European Capital of Culture 2008, and to honourably extend the award’s main objective: to bring new art to new audiences.This year, ambiguous narratives, folklore, the supernatural, and political, religious and cultural motifs are explored, questioned and confronted. But with two previously nominated artists up again - a pattern reminiscent of previous years - can the non-medium-specific prize be representative of today’s art climate? You decide…  ZarinaBhimji As the only female artist, Uganda-born Zarina Bhimji has a lot to live up to. Her fascination with the trade and immigration routes of India and Africa are presented via a poetic body of new work loaded with historical, cultural and personal experience. However, any traces of her extensive research are non-evident as we glimpse a life that once existed but is now dilapidated through neglect. Waiting is a beautifully poignant film. With the allusion to human activity within a sisal rope factory, flickering in the shadows and the murmur of chit-chat, the decrepit building hints at an unknown sadness, helped by an emotive soundtrack and romantic lighting. The permeation of human presence lingers within her photographs of uninhabited spaces. Graffiti’d interiors, decaying entrances, abandoned docks, empty homes and deserted weapons, all an evocative measure of human existence and encounter. Whether Bhimji’s visual poetry will impress the judges is another matter.  NathanColey Untitled (Threshold Sculpture) should come with a warning sign - Mind The Step - as Nathan Coley marks out the boundary of his Turner Prize offering. You are at once aware of your transition from one conceptually minded space to another as you must step over the work and reset your artistic radar. Once in Coley’s domain we begin to question the manifestation of religious, political and artistic ideologies through architectural dwellings. Initially, you are met with a humble scale model of a semi-detached house adorned with Hope and Glory, words indicative of English patriotism. In Annihilated Confessions, Coley questions whether, in our modern society, our sins can truly be absolved within a wooden box. And residing on a scaffold structure on the back wall is a piece for which Coley was nominated: There Will Be No Miracles Here resolutely looks out onto a non-existent crowd proclaiming its decree.  MikeNelson Unlike his previous installations, Amnesiac Shrine, Or The Misplacement (A Futurological Fable): Mirrored Cubes - Inverted - With The Reflection Of An Inner Psyche As Represented By A Metaphorical Landscape is clean of fantastical settings cluttered with debris. And yet it’s still reminiscent of magic realism and the resonating references of Jorge Luis Borges and Stanislaw Lem. Specifically created for the Turner Prize, Nelson has constructed a claustrophobic and intentionally confusing installation, albeit a little too small for my liking. Drawing inspiration from his ambiguous non-existent “biker gang”, The Amnesiacs allows Nelson to realise three disconcerting interconnected chambers. As an abandoned campfire, with red plastic representing perpetually burning flames, greets you on arrival and departure you wonder, have you entered the shrine of Vesta? Then, within the central chamber an obscure vision is encased within the cavities of four identical columns. Nelson’s labyrinthine preoccupation comes into play as entrance and exit are mirrored and strip-lit corridors seek to disorientate you.  MarkWallinger The hot favourite to win is 48-year-old Mark Wallinger. This is his second chance at pipping the others to the Turner Prize post, the first being 12 years ago when he lost to Damien Hirst. It’s interesting then that he should choose to exhibit a piece from 2004-05. Sleeper is the filmed culmination of his Artist In Residence stint at Berlin’s DAAD, where Wallinger walks around the Mies van der Rohe-designed Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin dressed as the city’s emblem, a bear. Performed over ten nights, you watch as Wallinger in furry guise slumps against marble walls, disappears out of view, engages with passers-by through the glass windows and generally moseys around the space like a spectacle at the zoo. It’s an odd sight, the appropriation of a German symbol by an Englishman, and it can be argued that it confronts a variety of ideas. Unfortunately, for me it never quite hits the spot.
Freire Barnes
The Turner Prize is at Tate Liverpool until 13 January 08.
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