LONDON-BASED Claudette Johnson has been shortlisted for the 2024 Turner Prize. A pioneer in the British Black Arts Movement, Johnson creates commanding, large-scale figurative works that center Black men and women. Tate Britain announced the shortlist of four artists, including three women, this morning. The selected artists are Johnson, Pio Abad, Jasleen Kaur, and Delaine Le Bas.
One of the world’s top visual art prizes, the Turner Prize celebrates British contemporary art. The Turner Prize winner will be announced Dec. 3, at a ceremony at Tate Britain. The winner is awarded £25,000 (about US $31,000) and the other shortlisted artists receive £10,000 (about US $12,400). Works by all four artists will be showcased in a Turner Prize exhibition opening at Tate Britain on Sept. 25.
Claudette Johnson. | Photo © Anne Tetzlaff, Courtesy Tate Britain
“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,” Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain and chair of the Turner Prize jury, said in a statement. “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.”
The shortlisted artists “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.”
— Tate Britain Director Alex Farquharson
The nominations were made by a juried panel led by Farquharson with four other members: Rosie Cooper, director of Wysing Arts Centre in Cambrdige; Ekow Eshun, writer, broadcaster and curator; Sam Thorne, director general and CEO at Japan House London; and Lydia Yee, curator and art historian.
The artists were selected based on the presentation of their work in recent monographic exhibitions. Johnson was recognized for a pair of 2023 shows at The Courtauld Gallery (“Claudette Johnson: Presence”), her first solo exhibition in a public gallery in London, and Ortuzar Projects, a commercial gallery in New York, where “Claudette Johnson: Drawn Out” was her first solo exhibition in the United States.
Installation view of “Claudette Johnson: Presence,” The Courtauld Gallery, 2023. | Courtesy the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London. © The Courtauld, Photo by David Bebber
BORN IN MANCHESTER, UK, Johnson’s career spans five decades. When she joined in 1981, Johnson was among the first members of the BLK Art Group, an organization of young Black artists who interrogated race, gender, and political issues in their work.
Over the past five years, Johnson, 65, has garnered heightened attention. When “Claudette Johnson: I Came to Dance” opened at Modern Art Oxford in 2019, the career survey marked her first major institutional solo show since the 1990. Last year, she was featured in T: The New York Times Style Magazine in advance of “Claudette Johnson: Drawn Out” opening at Ortuzar Projects. She responded to questions about the representation of Black women in art, the visibility of Black artists in the current moment, the years when she made hardly any work, and how Toni Morrison influenced her work.
“When I read her first novel, ‘The Bluest Eye,’ those words were very impactful: transformative, really, because she had foregrounded Black people in a way that I hadn’t seen before. I am not American, of course, but the experiences of the characters spoke directly to me, and I’d never been addressed so directly before,” Johnson told the Times. “When I went to do my own work, I found myself wanting to bring Black people into the foreground in a way that I hadn’t seen before, and hopefully would speak as directly as she did to me.” The shortlist announcement summarized her practice:
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Johnson is noted for her figurative portraits of Black women and men in a combination of pastels, gouache and watercolour. Countering the marginalisation of Black people in Western art history, Johnson shifts perspectives and invests her portraits of family and friends with a palpable sense of presence. In a year that the jury felt represented a milestone in her practice, they were struck by Johnson’s sensitive and dramatic use of line, colour, space and scale to express empathy and intimacy with her subjects.
The Turner Prize was first presented in 1984. Chris Ofili was the first Black artist to win the prize in 1998. The next year, Steve McQueen received the award (1999). It would be nearly two decades before another Black artist was honored. Two of Johnson’s contemporaries have since landed the prize. In 2017, Lubaina Himid became the first Black woman and then-oldest artist to win the Turner Prize. She was 63 at the time. In 2022, the Turner Prize went to Veronica Ryan at age 66. CT
FIND MORE Merton College in the UK commissioned a portrait of Stuart Hall by Claudette Johnson that was unveiled in 2023
Installation view of “Claudette Johnson: Drawn Out,” Ortuzar Projects, New York, N.Y., 2023. | Courtesy of Ortuzar Projects, New York and Hollybush Gardens, London. Photo by Tim Doyon. © Claudette Johnson
Installation view of “Claudette Johnson: Drawn Out,” Ortuzar Projects, New York, N.Y., 2023. | Courtesy of Ortuzar Projects, New York and Hollybush Gardens, London. Photo by Tim Doyon. © Claudette Johnson
Installation view of “Claudette Johnson: Presence,” The Courtauld Gallery, 2023. | Courtesy the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London © The Courtauld. Photo: David Bebber
BOOKSHELF
“Claudette Johnson: Presence” documents the artist’s recent exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, her first solo show in a public gallery in London. “Claudette Johnson: Line, Rhythm, Space” is expected in July. “Claudette Johnson: I Came to Dance” was published to coincide with Claudette Johnson’s 2019 exhibition at Modern Art Oxford in the UK. The catalog includes contributions by Courtney J. Martin and Steve McQueen, among others.
