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This year’s Turner Prize shortlist has just been announced ahead of the prize ceremony and exhibition at Towner Eastbourne later in the year. It’s fine. Nothing earth-shattering, plenty of good art, but it’s not what we here at Time Out would have picked, oh no.
We were just going to let it lie, forget about it. But then the always very good Spittle art newsletter published their alternative Turner Prize shortlist, and we’ve been inspired to do similar. So here is who we would have picked for this year’s shortlist, all shows by British or UK-based artists that took place in 2022. It’s obviously very London-centric, because that’s what we do here, we’re Time Out London, OK?
Time Out’s alternative Turner Prize shortlist
Rachel Jones at Chisenhale Gallery
Jones’s vast abstract paintings are like a psychedelic trip to the dentist, with huge canvases filled with teeth and lips and gums. They’re wild, expressionistic, hyper-colourful things that aren’t just beautiful, but emotional, satirical and filled with questions of race and representation. It’s conceptual, bold, clever, unique painting.
Read the review here.
Simeon Barclay at South London Gallery
Darth Vader on a Stanna stairlift, puppets of film characters and a wall of unopenable doors: Barclay’s show at South London Gallery was a dizzying, murky, unapproachable exploration of private spaces, Northern nightclubs that wouldn’t let a young black man in, cultural worlds where the doors were always closed unless you knew the right people. The show as maybe a bit too referential for its own good, but it was still a great idea.
Read the review here.
Penny Goring at ICA
Goring spent decades in poverty, making art for her, and her alone. This collection of ink drawings and improvised sculptures wasn’t made to sell to rich collectors, or to be hung in fancy galleries. It’s art made because making art is the only option. Seeing it here in Goring’s first ever institutional show was like being let into her private world, and that felt like a genuine privilege.
Read the review here.
Venture Arts at TJ Boulting
Venture Arts is a Manchester-based charity for people with learning disabilities, encouraging and fostering their creativity. ‘Yess Lad’, the small group show of their work at TJ Boulting in Fitzrovia, was art stripped of all artifice, all pretension and all bullshit, leaving behind totally joyful, free, gorgeous creativity.
Read the review here.
The real Turner Prize is at Towner Eastbourne, more details here.
Can’t make it to Eastbourne? Here are London’s top ten exhibitions.
Want art, but free? Here are London’s best free art shows.