Turner Prize 2021: A Personal Reflection
On 29 December 2021 as the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 settled in to its rampage across the UK, my party of three managed to visit Coventry and spend much of the day in the delightful Herbert Gallery and Museum . We tentatively booked our free tickets a couple of weeks before, unsure until the morning of 26 December that we'd even get away to the West Midlands to visit family. Testing negative on the Wednesday morning, Andrew, his mum (textile artist Jacky Shail ) and I struck out east from Malvern to the 2021 UK City of Culture and found the Herbert. The staff were welcoming, informative and helpful. We felt as secure as could be from seeing them regularly cleaning surfaces and kindly but firmly putting across a message of 'no mask, no entry' to anyone not covering their germ-holes. I'm going to mostly focus on the Turner Prize show in these notes, but it's also worth pointing out the venue's other offerings. The Herbert's museum section traces Coventry&#