#NommedForTheTurns #WonTheTurns

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I've had heaps on lately and haven't been blogging but I couldn't let this week pass without marking Array Collective's historic win of the 2021 Turner Prize. Although Willie Doherty has been nominated twice before and 2014 winner Duncan Campbell had studied and worked in Belfast, this is the first time the UK art prize - which began in 1984 - has been awarded to artists from Northern Ireland. And what a win it is. While important, this is so much more than acknowledging the work of individuals and even collectives, as is the emphasis of this year's exhibition. For us nordies it's recognition, it's not being so much a place apart, it's being seen and heard at last, it's no longer being the little backwater to be pitied, written off and ignored. The vibrant subculture out of which Array emerged and have taken by the horns has been around for a while. Through their concentrated efforts they're charging ahead, showing how it's done and what can be achieved together through #cracktivism, that is, serious and urgent but good-natured and humorous agitating. At the centre of this are eleven brilliant minds belonging to eleven amazing humans:

Given that much of Array's actions converge with those of Alliance for Choice, it was important and lovely to see some of the collective onstage accepting the award with their small (and rather brand new in two cases) humans joining in the excitement, reinforcing their messaging around autonomy and choice in becoming parents and more modern approaches to family. It was also important to hear them talk about putting their £25,000 prize money towards city centre premises, highlighting how artists are being pushed out to the periphery in Belfast - something which is also happening here in Newcastle upon Tyne and no doubt in other post-industrial UK cities undergoing gentrification under the guise of regeneration.

Hopefully someday I'll have something deeper and more articulate to say, perhaps even seeing if a proper analysis of Array's work could be a rousing starting point for tracing what a year ago I called the performative impulse in art in Northern Ireland. For now, I couldn't be more proud. This gives me great hope and I am so grateful to Array and the wider arts community back home for being such glorious melters. 


 

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