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Turner Prize Was Canceled, but Organizers Still Gave Out the Cash

The organizers of the British art award are giving out 10 grants to support artists.

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Tate Britain in London. The museum usually hosts an exhibition of work by artists nominated for the Turner Prize.Credit...Tate Photography

LONDON — A photographer who captures Black British life, an artist who works with industrial air-conditioners and a mixed-media practitioner who made his mother the star of a show are among 10 artists being given grants of 10,000 pounds each (about $12,500) as a replacement for this year’s Turner Prize.

The prize, perhaps Britain’s most prestigious art accolade, is usually awarded each December after an exhibition displaying the work of four shortlisted artists. This year’s edition was canceled in May because of the coronavirus pandemic, and Tate Britain, its organizers, asked the jury to select artists to receive grants instead.

“Gallery closures and social distancing measures are vitally important, but they are also causing huge disruption to the lives and livelihoods of artists,” Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain, said in a statement at the time.

He said that J.M.W. Turner — the 19th-century British artist the prize is named after — would have approved of sharing the prize money out so widely, since he “once planned to leave his fortune to support artists in their hour of need.”

The grant recipients include Liz Johnson Artur, a Ghanaian-Russian who photographs members of the African diaspora in London in settings like schools and night life; Oreet Ashery, an Israeli artist who has made films about preparing for the afterlife; and Shawanda Corbett, an American artist based in Oxford, England, who makes ceramics and performances, some of which have commented on slavery.

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A view of Oreet Ashery’s “Revisiting Genesis” at the “Misbehaving Bodies: Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery” exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London last year.Credit...Oreet Ashery/The Wellcome Collection

Sean Edwards, another recipient, is a Welsh artist who received media attention in Britain last year for an exhibition at the Venice Biennale that focused on his working-class upbringing. Every day during the show, his mother read a monologue from her home in a Wales housing project, and it was relayed to Venice and played aloud in a grand exhibition space.

The other winners are Arika, a political art collective based in Scotland; Jamie Crewe; Sidsel Meineche Hansen; Ima-Abasi Okon; Imran Perretta; and Alberta Whittle. (Ms. Okon is the artist who has worked with air-conditioners.)

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A view of “Infinite Slippage: nonRepugnant Insolvencies T!-a!-r!-r!-y!-i!-n!-g! as Hand Claps of M’s Hard’Loved’Flesh (I’M irreducibly-undone because)—Quantum Leanage-Complex-Dub,” a 2019 exhibition by Ima-Abasi Okon at the Chisenhale Gallery.Credit...Ima Abasi Okon; Andy Keate

The Turner Prize was once a major event in Britain, though in recent years public interest has waned. Past winners have included Damien Hirst, Grayson Perry and Steve McQueen, the director of the movies “12 Years a Slave” and “Widows.”

But British newspapers still often use the prize as an excuse to poke fun at the art world, characterizing it as bizarre, overly political or out of touch. Last year, a decision to award the prize to all four shortlisted artists drew mixed reactions from commentators. In a statement, the artists said their work was “incompatible with the competition format, whose tendency is to divide and individualize.”

This year’s sum of £100,000, given out on Thursday, is more than double the usual total prize money. Usually, a winner receives £25,000 and the others on the shortlist get £5,000 each.

In a news release, Mr. Farquharson said he hoped the Turner Prize would return to its usual format in 2021.

A correction was made on 
July 6, 2020

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the day on which the grants were given out. It was on Thursday, not on Monday.

How we handle corrections

Alex Marshall is a European culture reporter, based in London. More about Alex Marshall

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Recognition for Artists. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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