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Commentary: Grown-up list with political edge

By Richard Dorment

Last Updated: 3:40pm BST 08/05/2007

This year’s Turner Prize shortlist definitely has a political edge to it, and that’s something that has been conspicuously absent from British art in recent years— at least in comparison to what is happening in the US.
All the nominated artists are well established and widely known for making consistently strong work.

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In fact, the only reason I was surprised to see Mark Wallinger’s name on the shortlist was because I thought he’d won the Turner Prize years ago (whereas in fact he was only nominated in the year Damien Hirst won).
I’m only sorry that they all can’t walk away with the £25,000 prize.
Wallinger is the one to beat. He is one of Britain’s most thoughtful and most original artists, coming up time and time with works of art that move, enlighten and speak to our deepest selves. His nomination for 'State Britain’, the ambitious installation you can see in the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain is richly deserved.
The 40 metre long reconstruction of the flags and banners the government seized from anti war protester Brian Haw’s camp outside the Houses of Parliament speaks out not only against the war but against this appalling government.
The destruction of the original protest materials by the police represented a blatant suppression of free speech and yet was allowed to happen with barely a peep of protest. By re-creating Haw’s camp in an art gallery Wallinger has made it live forever.
Glasgow born Nathan Coley made one of those works of art that once seen is never forgotten: he filled a gallery with cardboard models of every place of worship listed in the Edinburgh telephone directory. Not only was the spectacle of a room filled with churches and meeting halls, synagogues and mosques stunning, but it demonstrated, as no words could, the central importance of religious faith in Scottish life.
How you read the ubiquity of houses dedicated to God - as a sign of spirituality or of oppression - was up to each spectator.
Mike Nelson builds labyrinthine interiors through which his viewers are invited to wander. When you enter a typical work by Nelson you find yourself in a rabbit warren of corridors and shabby rooms where, often enough, it is clear that something has happened, some story has unfolded that may or may not have been violent but that makes you uneasy.
Nelson creates atmospheres, not narratives. It is up to us to imagine what might have happened or is going to happen in these spaces. In that sense, wandering through one of his installations is like picking up a short story and finding yourself in the middle of it.
The final shortlisted artist, Zarina Bhimji, makes ravishing films that have no linear narrative but that cumulatively explore the natural beauty and the terrible history of her native Uganda.
She is the one artist on the list whose work is frankly beautiful, but it’s a beauty that is always tinged with awareness of the past.
Whoever wins, this year’s exhibition of work by the shortlisted artists (at Tate Liverpool for the first time) is bound to be one of the most interesting of the year.
Congratulations to the judges - Michael Bracewell, Fiona Bradley, Thelma Golden, Miranda Sawyer and Christoph Grunenberg - for coming up with such a grown up, consistently interesting list.

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THE TURNER PRIZE SHORTLIST 2007

This is the first time that the Turner Prize has been presented outside London since it began in 1984. The prize is awarded to a British artist under the age of fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months up to May 2007		.