Artist who uses worship bells and Irn-Bru in works up for Turner Prize

The shortlist for 2024’s Turner Prize has been announced and includes Scottish artist Jasleen Kaur who uses worship bells and the drink Irn-Bru in her work.

Manilla-born Pio Abad, Manchester-born Claudette Johnson, Glasgow-born Kaur and Worthing-born Delaine Le Bas have been nominated in the prize’s 40th anniversary as the prestigious art event returns to London’s Tate Britain for the first time in six years.

The artists are competing for £25,000, while those shortlisted will be awarded £10,000.

Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain and chairman of the Turner Prize jury, said: “It is an honour to announce such a fantastic shortlist of artists and I cannot wait to see their exhibition at Tate Britain this autumn.

“All four of them make work that is full of life. They show how contemporary art can fascinate, surprise and move us, and how it can speak powerfully of complex identities and memories, often through the subtlest of details.

“In the Turner Prize’s 40th year, this shortlist proves that British artistic talent is as rich and vibrant as ever.”

Kaur is on the list for Alter Altar at Tramway, Glasgow, which was aimed at showcasing her growing up in Glasgow’s Sikh community.

The exhibition used family photos, an Axminster carpet, a vintage Ford Escort covered in a giant doily, Irn-Bru and kinetic hand bells.

The 37-year-old, who lives in London, had previously showcased her work at the Victoria and Albert Museum by looking at popular Indian cinema through Yoorup.

Johnson has been given the nod for her solo exhibition Presence at The Courtauld Gallery in London, and Drawn Out at Ortuzar Projects, New York.

She uses portraits of black women and men in a combination of pastels, gouache and watercolour and was praised by the judges for her “sensitive and dramatic use of line, colour, space and scale to express empathy and intimacy with her subjects”.

Johnson, 65, received an MBE from the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace in June 2022 after being named in the New Year’s Honours List for her services to the arts.

Le Bas’s Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning at Secession art institute in Vienna saw painted fabrics hung, with theatrical costumes and sculptures also part of the exhibit.

The 58-year-old artist, who lives in Worthing, was inspired by the death of her grandmother and the history of the Roma people.

The jury said they “were impressed by the energy and immediacy present in this exhibition, and its powerful expression of making art in a time of chaos”.

Abad’s solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford includes drawing, etchings and sculptures which have been combined to “ask questions of museums”, according to the jury.

The 40-year-old, who works in London, reflects on colonial history and growing up in the Philippines where his parents struggled against authoritarianism.

The title of his exhibit is a nod to Mark Twain’s To the Person Sitting In Darkness, which hit out at imperialism.

An exhibition of the shortlisted work will be held at Tate Britain from September 25 to February 16.

The winner will be announced at an award ceremony at Tate Britain on December 3.