Helen Marten Takes Home 2016 Turner Prize

Helen Marten has been named the winner of the 2016 Turner Prize, which carries a purse of £25,000 for the winner and £5,000 for each of the other three shortlisted artists. Marten beat out Michael Dean, Anthea Hamilton, and Josephine Pryde.

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Hosted by London’s Tate Gallery, the Turner Prize is one of the world’s most prestigious art awards. Recent winners include architectural collective Assemble (2015), Duncan Campbell (2014), and Laure Prouvost (2013). Among other awardees since the prize’s founding in 1984 are Steve McQueen, Chris Ofili, Gillian Wearing, and Rachel Whiteread.

LimpetApology(traffictenses), 2015. Photo: Annik Wetter © The Artist; Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London; Greene Naftali, New York; Koenig Galerie, Berlin; T293, Rome and Naples.

Marten was nominated for her contribution to the International Exhibition at the 56th Venice Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor, with a piece titled Lunar Nibs, and her solo show “Eucalyptus Let Us In” at the New York gallery Greene Naftali.

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As artnet News’s Lorena Muñoz-Alonso wrote at the time of Marten’s nomination, “[She] creates sculptures and installations formed by accumulations of found objects and crafted elements—often impossible to differentiate—which evoke the visual flotsam of contemporary culture. The results are dense, tableaux-like compositions where flat vertical planes counterpoint horizontal formations.”