At the Turner Prize, controversy is the name of the game. In fact,
this year’s Frieze Art Fair in London supplied all that, but was
commercially successful, as well as being a remarkable feat of organisation.
All the punters were there, putting other fairs in the shade and
claiming to be the greatest in Europe.
For the 2004 Prize, the controversy rests with an artwork nominated
by the judges. The display by Langlands and Bell has actually had
to be withdrawn. The 12-minute film was made by the artists in 2002,
in Kabul, Afghanistan, as a result of an enlightened commission
by the Imperial War Museum. However, the display has had the lawyers
thumbing their rule books nervously, as this is not a television
property show, but a run around Osama Bin Laden’s former home. One
of the subjects is the dramatic trial of one man in the Afghan supreme
court. However, in the end, said Nikki Bell, their ‘trial’ film
simply had to be removed.
Two other artists in the show also indulge this new mood. Jeremy
Deller has made a telling film about George W. Bush in Texas and
Yinka Shonibare presents a rerun of the masked ball assassination
of King Gustav III in Sweden. Such morbid preoccupations seem to
represent a new sobriety for the previously fun-loving artists and
clientele for the Award.
