Turner Prize winners Array Collective deserve better critical engagement than they received from the judges, write Ciara Hickey and Jane Morrow.
As we sit down to write this article in Belfast on 5 December 2021, it marks exactly 100 years since the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed and Northern Ireland came to exist as a separate entity, since which time it has been defined by almost constant political and violent unrest. In spite of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and the subsequent economic transformation of the country, the weight of the conflict continues to bear down upon the emotional, physical, political and cultural health of its inhabitants.
From childhood in our native Northern Ireland, we navigate this conflicted territory through a series of learned and intuited codes, language and allegiances. It is from this intricately nuanced and highly contested context that Array Collective have emerged. Based in Belfast, they were awarded the 2021 Turner Prize this December. They are the first winners from the region of the most high-profile award to be given in British art...Keep reading on Elephant Magazine.
As we sit down to write this article in Belfast on 5 December 2021, it marks exactly 100 years since the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed and Northern Ireland came to exist as a separate entity, since which time it has been defined by almost constant political and violent unrest. In spite of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and the subsequent economic transformation of the country, the weight of the conflict continues to bear down upon the emotional, physical, political and cultural health of its inhabitants.
From childhood in our native Northern Ireland, we navigate this conflicted territory through a series of learned and intuited codes, language and allegiances. It is from this intricately nuanced and highly contested context that Array Collective have emerged. Based in Belfast, they were awarded the 2021 Turner Prize this December. They are the first winners from the region of the most high-profile award to be given in British art...Keep reading on Elephant Magazine.