This year’s globally inclusive lineup is part of a much deeper and longer conversation about what culture is – and who has a voice
• Claudette Johnson’s art for Cotton Capital nominated for Turner prize
This is a great shortlist. The artists here make art in highly individual and different ways and none are the next hot young thing. Sixty-five-year-old Claudette Johnson’s work reflects her first generation British Caribbean background. The art of Delaine Le Bas, 58, has its origins in her Romany Traveller heritage. Born in Manila in 1983, Pio Abad’s practice often focuses on the complexities of postcolonialism. A lot of the inspiration behind Jasleen Kaur’s art comes from her Punjabi Sikh upbringing in Glasgow, where she was born in 1986.
Their works approach the world in very different ways, obliging us to look at it from their own particular standpoints. Johnson makes large-scale pastels and Kaur works between sculpture, sound, performance and writing. Abad’s art is as much involved in material culture and exhibition-making as it in having a preferred, signature medium, while Le Bas’s wide-ranging works feature embroidery and decoupage, sculpture, installation and performance.
