To mark the 40th edition of the Turner Prize, this year the exhibition of shortlisted artists returns to its home at Tate Britain ahead of the December prizegiving, following six peripatetic years in the regions. If this is meant to strike a positive note for the beleaguered prize, it doesn’t. The shortlist avoids previous pitfalls around gender, ethnicity, and age, but it feels as if in its craven capitulation to inclusivity, it has selected artists based on their personal identities, not their art.
An immaculately balanced majority female shortlist, featuring a spread of cultural and ethnic backgrounds from across the country, with ages ranging from 38 to 65 means there’s precious little for anyone to get steamed up about, and where the politics of the prize is concerned that’s a good thing. But for the Prize to have value, the art needs to provoke (just imagine, back in the glory days of the YBAs, the prize was broadcast on TV and the triggered fulminating copy in the tabloid press). If the shortlist is a masterclass in diversity, the art itself is has a shocking case of tunnel visionand from Delaine Le Bas’s references to her Roma heritage to Claudette Johnson’s portraits of Black men and women, is wholly preoccupied with cultural identity, community and belonging.
It’s true that identity is a dominant theme in society at large, but in such anxious and challenging times for so many, and for so many reasons, this is a disgracefully narrow focus, that really negates the better moments here, compromising the entire presentation of Claudette Johnson, who is surely the stand-out winner.
Pio Abad’s pen and ink drawings each depict a Benin Bronze next to an arrangement of everyday objects (Photo: Tate Britain/PA)
The opening presentation by Manila-born Pio Abad (born in 1983) is a rather pompous protest against museum collections, specifically the holdings of Oxford institutions including the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Ashmolean, which hosted the exhibition for which Abad has been nominated. In an installation made by Abad in collaboration with jeweller Frances Wadsworth Jones, two bronze tiaras face each other, as if crowning the (absent) heads of a pair of sphinxes.The piece is simple – too simple, because it is entirely empty of meaning, requiring a lengthy explanatory text in which we learn that the tiaras refer to one worn by Gladys Deacon, the Duchess of Marlborough, whose likeness appears on two sphinxes at Blenheim Palace. Before Deacon, it had been confiscated from the Romanovs by the Bolsheviks; after Deacon, it found itself into the grubby hands of Imelda Marcos, the wife of the former dictator of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos.
In contrast, a series of pen and ink drawings, each one a depiction of a Benin Bronze next to an arrangement of everyday objects – plants, an anglepoise lamp, piles of books, a jar of Nutella – elegantly explores the layered significance of these notoriously looted objects, in Nigeria, in Britain, then and now. The point is subtle, precise and humorous – that the Benin Bronzes belong within a complex cultural matrix; that in being taken from their rightful place they are treated as meaningless knick-knacks, and so on, with many shades conveyed at once in trenchant images – no explanatory text required.
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Like Abad, Jasleen Kaur (born 1986),from Glasgow, who makes installations from found objects leans heavily on obscure, and mundane objects, which she imbues with nuanced cultural and personal meanings impossible to fathom without a guide. While Abad’s failures are matched by moments of triumph, the same cannot be said for Kaur, whose combined south Asian and Glaswegian heritage is vaguely evident in references to Irn-Bru and a soundtrack featuring Sufi devotional music interspersed with chart-toppers. An enormous fake Axminster carpet, and some gaudily dressed tables bearing motorised wooden hands, that periodically operate little brass “jingles”, begin to summon the atmosphere of a community hall, or, we are told, the vast prayer halls of the artist’s upbringing, but it’s a job half done, that leaves the viewer feeling alienated and confused.
There’s an undercurrent of violence in Jasleen Kaur’s scattered clothes (Photo: Keith Hunter/Tramway/Glasgow Life)
Perhaps this is deliberate – after all, there’s an undercurrent of violence and threat in the scattered clothes, and the photograph of men with bricks. But despite evidence of human presence – in photographs, music, and perplexingly a Ford Escort draped with a giant crocheted doily – the installation fails to spark empathy or even curiosity, its lack of visual articulacy more boring than stirring.
Making matters significantly worse for Kaur is the contrast between her inadequate offering, and the immersive epic that follows. While Kaurappears to havegiven scant thought to how best to communicate her ideas, Delaine Le Bas’s maximalist installation Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins the New Life/A New Life Is Beginning grabs the viewer and very nearly won’t let go, with a production of filmic proportions, that occupies every available surface across three spaces.
A ghostly figure guards the entrance, wonderfully ethereal in white cloth, the details of her hands and hair sewn in black thread as if drawn in the air. The room is an extension of her, as if her essence infuses the space and the objects in her orbit. White fabric surfaces are spattered in black paint, drawn all over with compelling, nonsensical figures, of monkeys and naked women, and feverish workings out that – if this were a film – would indicate that we’d stepped through the plastic sheeting into the den of a deranged genius.
Delaine Le Bas’s work refers to the nomadic life that is a feature of the British Roma culture to which she belongs (Photo: Iris Ranzinger/Secession Vienna)
Tents are a motif – a reference to the nomadic life that is a feature of the British Roma culture to which the artist belongs – here containing a flower, once again made like a stitched sketch, and with something like a child’s stuffed toy mouse hanging in the background. Another tent-like opening leads into a second space, its walls covered in silver paper. The soundtrack, which in the first gallery blends rather confusingly with the preceding installation, becomes more insistent here, the sense of claustrophobia increased in a space made mysterious with its passageways and openings. Incidental objects recall the artist’s grandmother – “Nan” – with vases of flowers, the collapsed body of a hay-stuffed horse, red baby shoes, mutated into nightmarish versions of the trinkets that once sat in the old lady’s display cabinet.
It’s a journey through an underworld of grief, and death, mediated by family and tradition. But the narrative trajectory falters in the final space, where a return to fabric hangings, this time painted in bright colours, revisits motifs of tents and animal figures, with little sense of progression, so that the compelling nature of the previous spaces loses its hold.
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In Claudette Johnson’s self-portrait Protection (2024) she shares the canvas with a Makonde sculpture (Photo: Andy Keate/Hollybush Gardens)
After the excesses of Delaine Le Bas’s bizarre and fevered world, Claudette Johnson’s formally simple portraits of Black men and women offer some relief. Like Le Bas, Johnson knows how to pull in a viewer, and her portraits are irresistibly inviting, the artist herself turning to meet us in the self-portrait that greets us as we enter the space. Though selected from several important shows this year, notably at the Courtauld Gallery in London, her nomination honours a lifetime’s achievement. Though Johnson disputes the term portrait, aiming for something more experimental and unfettered by tradition, it’s hard to call them anything else, since they so vividly convey human, and specifically Black presence. It’s uncomfortable, seeing these portraits that make us acknowledge the enduring significance of skin colour, even now, and however much we might wish it were otherwise.
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The exhibition quotes the sociologist Stuart Hall, who said “The fact is ‘Black’ has never just been there”, an idea that Johnson makes explicit in her self-portrait Protection (2024), in which she shares the canvas with a Makonde sculpture. The sculpture refers to the influences that shaped Johnson’s work as part of the Black British Art Movement in the 1980s, but it also has a broader meaning, inviting us to consider the exoticising tendencies of painters like Gauguin, for whom such a sculpture was a marker of otherness.
The highlight here, and surely of the entire show is Johnson’s Pietà (2024), painted in pastel and oil paint on bark cloth, an ostentatiously “African” material that works to unleash a universal jolt of pain, as a mother holds the body of her dead son, presumably a victim of knife crime, that so disproportionately affects young Black men. Around the edges are words to stop your heart: “Every mother was called when he called for his mother.” There’s no question that Johnson must win, but how I wish she had some worthy competition.
Turner Prize 2024 is at Tate Britain 25 September to 16 February
Russia has struck an apartment block in the north-east Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, killing at least three people and injuring 31 more, say local officials.
The wave of strikes, which officials said had hit four districts, was conducted with the use of guided glide bombs on Tuesday.
“The targets for Russian bombs are a residential building, a bakery, a stadium… that is, the ordinary life of ordinary people,” said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The attack comes as fighting intensifies in the country’s east with Russian troops encircling and closing in on the largely destroyed town of Vuhledar.
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Shortly after Tuesday’s blitz in Kharkiv, Zelensky issued a statement sharing pictures of the destroyed residential tower – which showed a gaping hole in the middle of the building.
“There is much discussion now at the UN General Assembly about collective efforts for security and the future. But we just need to stop the terror. To have security. To have a future,” Zelensky said.
Meanwhile in Kharkiv, officials said the block that was hit had previously been struck at the start of the war.
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“It was almost repaired, all the windows were put in, insulated, and prepared for the heating season. The enemy hit it a second time with a KAB [glide bomb],” said Kharkiv’s mayor Ihor Terekov on Telegram.
Russia has increasingly been using glide bombs in recent months – Soviet-era bombs fitted out with wings and satellite navigation aids. They are cheap, destructive, and are said to have been key to Russia’s effort to capture further ground in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials said Russia conducted seven airstrikes with KAB glide bombs, injuring at least 21 civilians in the attacks on 13 residential buildings and two educational facilities.
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Zaporizhzhia officials also said Russia had conducted another strike on the south-eastern city on Monday night, which killed one person and injured at least four others including two children.
Russian forces have made serious advances in Ukraine’s east and are closing in on Vuhledar – a coal-mining town on the southern part of the Donbas front line. The Russians have been trying to seize the town since the beginning of their full-scale invasion.
On Monday, Russian military bloggers were reporting that Moscow’s troops had entered the outskirts of the town in the Donetsk region. Ukraine’s military has mentioned only a number of attempts to capture its positions in Vuhledar.
Meanwhile, Russian forces have also recently advanced near Hlyboke, Kupyansk, and Pokrovsk, according to the US-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War.
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The war tracking group said Ukrainian forces had recently advanced in Kursk region.
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Donald Trump will vow to deliver a “new American industrialism” if he wins a second term in the White House, a bid to outflank Kamala Harris on manufacturing policy in the economic duel ahead of the November election.
At a rally in Savannah, Georgia, on Tuesday, the former president is set to promote his own version of a US industrial policy centred on a promise to cut taxes for companies that manufacture in America and impose tariffs on those that don’t.
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According to a senior Trump adviser, the Republican presidential nominee will vow to lure jobs and factories to the US from abroad and “personally recruit” foreign companies.
The speech will come a day after the former president attacked John Deere, the storied US agricultural machinery manufacturer, for its plan to shift some production to Mexico, warning that as president he would slap massive tariffs on products it exported to the US.
Trump’s push on foreign investment comes as the Republican candidate and his Democratic rival Harris clash on the economy — the biggest issue for voters in this year’s White House race, according to many polls.
Harris is expected on Wednesday to deliver her own campaign speech on the economy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a rust-belt city at the centre of an election maelstrom over a Japanese company’s bid to buy US Steel — a takeover opposed by both candidates and Joe Biden.
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Trump’s push on foreign investment comes as Democrats warn that his plans to gut the clean energy subsidies from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act would damage a recovery under way in industrial America and amount to a self-inflicted wound as the US competes with China.
The IRA has already triggered a rush of investment to the US over the past two years which Trump’s opponents say would be at risk if he wins a second term in the White House.
Jennifer Granholm, the US energy secretary, told the Financial Times in an interview this week that scrapping the IRA would jeopardise a “tsunami of investment” that was unfolding.
“That just seems like we would be not just unilaterally disarming, we would be stabbing ourselves because it would be so foolish,” she said.
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Trump will tell his audience in Georgia that his plans, which include cutting corporate tax to 15 per cent from 21 per cent for companies that produce goods domestically, slashing regulations and boosting energy production, will make the US more attractive to foreign companies. He will also pledge to make federal land available to would-be investors.
Economists have warned that Trump’s tariff and tax plans could reignite inflation and disrupt supply chains, raising doubts about his pitch to foreign investors.
Trump has threatened to impose up to 20 per cent tariffs on all imports, and even higher levies on goods from China, raising costs for manufacturers that depend on some degree on foreign components.
His comments in western Pennsylvania on Monday also showed his willingness to use tariffs on individual companies.
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“I’m just notifying John Deere right now: If you do that [shift production to Mexico], we’re putting a 200 per cent tariff on everything that you want to sell into the United States.”
On Monday, Trump also reiterated his opposition to the planned takeover of US Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel.
“We are going to keep US Steel right here in America,” Trump said on Monday night at a separate rally in western Pennsylvania.
The 15-year-old boy who died after being stabbed with a “zombie-style knife” in south-east London has been named.
Daejaun Campbell was found with a stab injury Eglinton Road, Woolwich, just after 18:30 BST on Sunday. He died at the scene.
Two men aged 52 and 18 have been arrested on suspicion of murder and remain in police custody.
Detectives investigating the case have appealed again for witnesses and anyone who knows anything about Daejaun’s death to contact them.
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‘Call my mum’
A woman who lives locally told BBC London she had picked up the injured boy’s phone after it rang and she was able to get a friend to come to his side.
“I was back and forth with the boy on the floor and just trying to comfort him – he was saying ‘I am 15’ and ‘to call my mum’,” the witness said.
The police say their investigation into Daejaun’s death is still in the early stages and that officers are trying to build a picture of what happened.
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Detectives believe the teenager was attacked with a zombie-style knife.
Det Ch Supt Trevor Lawry said: “My thoughts are with Daejaun’s loved ones as they try and come to terms with this heart-breaking incident.”
He added: “I want to appeal to you again and ask if you know anything about the death of young Daejaun.
“Did you see anything suspicious around the Eglinton Road area? Did you see anyone running away from the area? Do you have any footage? If you do then please contact police.”
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‘Sobering reminder’
In an appeal for witnesses on Monday, Det Ch Supt Lawry said: “Once again we have had to tell a child’s family that their loved one has been killed in an act of violence using a knife. Our thoughts are with them as they struggle to comprehend what has happened.
“The fact that a 15-year-old teenager, who had his whole life ahead of him, has been taken from his family in this way, is a stark and sobering reminder of the danger of ‘zombie-style’ knives.
“We are committed to doing everything in our power to taking these weapons off our streets.”
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Our instinct to burrow may have emerged at a time when we inhabited caves and sought solace and safety in the dark. Curling up in a confined space – albeit with more cushioning – has universal appeal. Nooks are synonymous with cocooning, and carving one out in the corners of a home conjures warmth.
“In small spaces, nooks play a part in achieving that feeling of protection and comfort,” says British designer Emma Ainscough, who’s snuck a bed in the eaves of a London townhouse, and wrapped another in cream linen surrounded by dreamy floral wallpaper.
Creating a place to retreat and relax has intensified with the advent of working from home. “Nooks bring about a very human response,” says Camilla Clarke, the creative director of design studio Albion Nord. “It’s important to consider how having a secluded space to escape enhances our wellbeing. I think it’s one of the reasons they have become so popular in recent years.”
For American interior designer Hadley Wiggins, the allure is also symbolic. “A nook represents the luxury of time – a lifestyle that has room for napping or an unrushed chat,” she says. “You may sleep there, but it isn’t the sleep of necessity.” When designing a historic home on Long Island’s North Fork – where she established her namesake firm in 2012 – Wiggins incorporated a fairytale-like sleeping berth, saturated in a palette of inky blues and putty green, in the pool house.
While some nooks invite seclusion, others draw people together. The creative consulting and interior design studio Wall for Apricots nestled a games area in a home perched in the California mountains, imagining it as a “treasured spot for a family to gather”, says co-founder Katy Burgess. An under-bench storage area conceals an assortment of games, while a custom Muhly table, a mix of vintage cushions, and wood tones add warmth and richness. “This area is a tiny emblem of the house itself, which was designed to be both functional and fantastical.”
Nooks hark back to building dens – this is what speaks to people
Max Rollitt, an antique dealer and decorator known for his English country homes, attests to the increased demand for layouts that feel bespoke and intimate. “We’re seeing a reversal of open-plan living – walls and doors being put in, rather than taken out. People are spending more time at home and, in doing so, they’ve needed more of a delineation of space.” In the same way, he says, “nooks needn’t be architecturally led. You can create one almost anywhere simply by defining the space, be it with furniture or fabrics.”
Rita Konig says that nooks tap into our playful side. “They hark back to building dens – this is what speaks to people,” says the British interior designer. “It often conjures memories of making camps under the kitchen table with blankets,” agrees designer Veere Grenney, who pays homage to this in his enchanting tented dressing room in Tangier, where a writing desk and bed are canopied from ceiling to floor in Schumacher’s berber-brown Rafe Stripe fabric.
Grenney, who’s designed more than a dozen sleeping nooks for clients, often uses curtains to frame the bed with sumptuous swathes. But what are the other requisites for a good nook?
“It should ideally highlight a view and draw on the tones and shadows from the exterior,” says Bernatz Ward. “My projects typically involve blurring the lines between the natural environment and interior construction, and nooks – such as window seats – are a dramatic way to do that.”
Lighting, whether natural or artificial, is also crucial, says Noa Santos, founder of New York-based design studio Nainoa. In a project in California, the studio set a square bathtub in panelled waxed white oak, and placed it against a large window overlooking a courtyard. The space is airy, light but also snug.
Ainscough proposes adding “complementary layers of textures, colour and pattern to create something considered and maximalist without being too overwhelming”. She continues: “It’s a real opportunity to be bolder than you would be in a larger space.”
When it comes to the bed, “make it a cabin: give it sides, a lowered ceiling and use the space around it for storage,” says Konig, whose bed boxes resemble those on trains and ships, allowing for small spaces and creating a feel that is more intentional than squished. Grenney also suggests including shelving for books. Most importantly, he concludes, “just get on and do it! One of my mantras is that you shouldn’t make things too perfect.”
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Troubled intercity rail operator Avanti West Coast will not be stripped of its contract early by the UK government, according to people with knowledge of the plans.
Earlier this year, northern leaders demanded that operation of the route — which connects London with major cities including Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool — be nationalised because of sustained frustrations over performance.
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Avanti was the worst-performing train operator in the UK between April and June, according to recent industry figures. Almost 60 per cent of its trains over the period were late, double the national average, figures from the Office of Rail and Road showed. Cancellation levels were also twice the national average.
However, legal advice provided to the Department for Transport concluded that the operator was not in breach of its performance obligations, people familiar with the findings said.
One of the people said the company’s most recent contract had “rewarded failure”, as it had been drawn up in such a way that it was very difficult to breach on performance grounds.
As a result, the route could end up being one of the last to be nationalised under Labour’s plans to gradually bring all rail services under state control, because its contract is one of the last to come up for renewal.
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Ministers are instead working on the basis that the first nationalisations under Labour will be Greater Anglia or West Midlands trains early next year.
Earlier on Tuesday, Starmer championed the railway services bill “bringing railways back into public ownership” in his speech to the Labour party conference in Liverpool.
Avanti, which is co-owned by First Group and Trentitalia, has been heavily criticised over the reliability and quality of its services since it took over the country’s biggest intercity rail route in 2019.
Twelve months ago the previous Conservative government extended its contract for a further nine years, with a break clause in 2026, following a brief period of improvement. Shortly afterwards the operator’s performance nosedived again.
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In April, members of the pan-northern transport body Transport for the North unanimously voted for the service to be nationalised because of its sustained unreliability, slashed timetables and poor customer service.
Greater Manchester’s Labour mayor Andy Burnham said he had “completely run out of patience” with the operator.
At the time, the Department for Transport said that removing Avanti’s contract would not solve problems that it said were caused by issues beyond the company’s control, such as the weather and infrastructure problems.
Three months later, Labour were elected to power on a promise to gradually nationalise the entirety of the rail network as each existing operating contract expires.
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Two people with knowledge of the matter said that the earliest end date was likely to be 2027, once a break in the contract had been executed.
The government is expected to begin its broader nationalisation process when the Passenger Railway Services bill receives Royal Assent, which is expected later this year.
Under the bill, contracts to run train operators that are let to private companies will be permanently returned to the government as they expire.
These former franchises would then be run by the Department for Transport’s “Operator of Last Resort”, which already operates four English railway franchises on behalf of the government.
Break clauses at Greater Anglia and West Midlands Trains expired in September, so the government is set to begin the nationalisations after giving one of these operators, which are both run by TransportUK, the required three months notice.
A government official said that process was expected to start in February.
Industry executives believe ministers had been considering whether to start with a high-profile struggling operator, such as Avanti or Cross Country, which received an improvement notice in August.
But they said an easier option would be to bring in one of the TransportUK franchises first, which are both performing well.
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Greater Anglia was the best-performing operator according to the recent reliability data, and is the only operator currently returning a surplus to the government.
One industry executive warned that trying to nationalise several operators in a short timeframe was “a recipe for failure and risk”.
Trenitalia and First Group declined to comment. The Department for Transport and TransportUK did not immediately comment.
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