©ASSEMBLE
Assemble, a London-based architecture collective, has won the 2015 Turner Prize for its work redesigning derelict houses in Liverpool. The award, which includes a £25,000 ($37,700) prize, was presented by Kim Gordon of the band Sonic Youth this afternoon at an award ceremony in Glasgow, Scotland. Adrian Searle, an art critic for The Guardian, wrote of Assemble’s winning work: “It shows a revulsion for the excesses of the art market, and a turn away from the creation of objects for that market. Their structure that was on show at this year’s Turner exhibition must be seen not as a work, but as a model of work that takes place elsewhere; not in the art world, but the world itself.”
Other artists on the shortlist for the award were Bonnie Camplin, Janice Kerbel, and Nicole Wermers. Past winners of the Turner Prize include Wolfgang Tillmans, Grayson Perry, and Martin Creed. The award often helps in making an artist’s career, giving him or her a high amount of public recognition, though it also has a long history of critical backlash. According to the BBC, Malcolm Morley, the first winner of the prize, said that the entire proceedings “disgusted” him. Tracey Emin’s iconic installation My Bed, which is exactly what it sounds like and was shortlisted for the prize in 1999, became the site of a pillow fight from two male visitors to the Tate Gallery, where the work was on view. Another artist threw eggs at Creed’s work, The Lights Going On and Off, the premise of which is also summed up tidily by its title.