Jesus College honorary fellow Veronica Ryan wins 2022 Turner Prize for sculpture exploring Windrush and Covid
Sculptor Veronica Ryan, artist in residence at Jesus College, Cambridge, from 1987-88, has been named the winner of the Turner Prize 2022 for her work which honours the Windrush generation and explores the Covid pandemic.
The Montserrat-born British artist, 66, was awarded the annual £25,000 prize for the “personal and poetic way she extends the language of sculpture” through found and usually forgotten objects and crafted materials. Frankie Goes to Hollywood singer Holly Johnson presented the award at a ceremony at St George’s Hall in Liverpool on Wednesday (December 7).
Ryan, the oldest winner in the art award’s 38-year history - and the first individual artist to be awarded the prize since 2018 - shouted “Power! Visibility!” when her success was announced at the ceremony.
She was recognised for two projects. One was her commission by Hackney Council to make the first permanent public sculpture in the UK to honour the legacy and contributions of the Windrush generation.
On a street in Hackney, north-east London, the three-piece marble and bronze work, Custard Apple (Annonaceae), Breadfruit (Moraceae) and Soursop (Annonaceae), recognises tropical fruits which are widely grown in the Caribbean and the Americas.
She was also recognised for her new body of work Along A Spectrum, which explores perception, history and personal narratives, as well as the psychological impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Works produced for the exhibition included pieces cast in clay and bronze, sewn, tea-stained and dyed fabrics, and bright neon crocheted fishing line pouches filled with a variety of seeds, fruit stones and skins.
Born in Plymouth, Montserrat, in 1956, Ryan has exhibited across the world and was made an OBE for services to art earlier this year. Fruit, seeds, plants and vegetables are recurring sculptural objects in her installations, representing displacement, fragmentation and alienation.
Helen Legg, director of Tate Liverpool and co-chairman of the Turner Prize jury, said: “The jury felt that they had an exceptionally strong shortlist but it came down to the fact that it felt as though now was a really vital time for Veronica’s practice.
“The jury spoke about how you could feel in the exhibition that this was a practice in a constant state of development, that she was experimenting, that there was this compulsion to make that she has. She’s making constantly when she’s travelling, when she’s in the gallery, when she’s at home, and that you could feel that vitality in the work.”
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A free exhibition of the four shortlisted artists is being held at Tate Liverpool until March 19, 2023. This year’s Turner Prize collection is being held at Tate Liverpool to mark 15 years since the award was first held in the city.
The Turner Prize, named after the radical British painter JMW Turner, is one of the world’s best-known prizes for the visual arts celebrating British artistic talent. Established in 1984, the prize is awarded to a British artist for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work.
After finishing her stint as artist in residence at Jesus College at the end of 1988, the college exhibited Ryan’s work in the first Sculpture in the Close exhibition. She was elected as an honorary fellow in 2021.