Will a Street Artist ever win the Turner Prize?

Tonight the winner of Turner Prize 2014 will be announced from 7:30 pm on Channel Four, but are the four nominees a fair representation of contemporary art? Are we not forgetting the incredible impact that Street Art has made on the art world in the last ten years, let alone the skill and thought process akin to Fine Art that guerilla art often embodies, be it on a public wall or in a gallery environment?

Why should Street Art be considered?

Firstly, let us establish that Street Art is art work that can be a stencilled spray painting or three dimensional object for example, that is presented in public spaces that shares themes and methods with accepted Fine Art art modes, be it satirical or abstract in subject. Street Art can also be found in galleries, with artists such as Nathan Bowen and Otto Schade painting on the walls of London's East End and showing spray painted canvases with Curious Duke Gallery. Street Art, or Urban art, is the newest art movement to make itself known in the long history of art.

Originally launched in 1984, the Turner Prize was founded by Patrons of Art to “help buy new art for Tate’s collection, and to encourage wider interest in contemporary art.” http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain/turner-prize/what-it-is So where or how is the newest art movement  represented? It isn't that Street Artists are exempt, as any artist can be nominated for an exhibition of their work. Curious Duke Gallery represents seven Street Artists* CLCIK HERE TO M EET THE ARTISTS, and is by no means alone in the gallery scene for taking on Urban artists; the UK is abuzz with ever changing public walls dedicated to Street Art with collectors racing to buy the work from the newest artists. Street Art has made it onto the walls of UK homes but not into the echelons of High Art.

Is Street Art Museum Art?

The term Museum Art is used to describe heavily conceptual art, art works that make art history, or are of a scale so large or monumental that only an institution could house it. It is art works of this oeuvre that have come to embody the Turner Prize, which calls into question how much it is meeting it's founding reason. Street Art is easily accessible, can be understood by all and does not alienate large groups of the public.

This lack of acknowledgement of Street Art in the Prize may be best described by Londonist Art Critic Tabish Khan. Khan goes so far to postulate that the stalwart abstract and conceptual art that the Turner Prize has come to be known for “isn’t always easy to understand and this imparts those ‘in the know’ with a certain power and influence over the uninitiated, including the general public” READ MORE HERE, and thus removing Street Art from the realms of the Turner Prize by default, with its instant messages. This isn't to say that Street Art can't be museum art, as it too reached monumental scale and often curves into abstraction and surrealism. Street Art is set to be museum art, it just hasn't made it there yet.

The Winners Contribution

Set up to introduce art to a wider the audience, the winner of this years prize will be set for recognition by the public, and their often controversial portfolio set to push the boundaries of modern art into new grounds. With art works such as Otto Schade's No Comment picturing an armed soldier walking into the sunset with an armed child, isn't it time Street Art was recognised as the grass roots of ground breaking art? Turner Prize 2015, lets see a Street Artist shortlisted.

 

Written by Curious Duke Gallery blogger Sinéad Loftus.

Lover of all art and fluffy cats.