Shortlist Announced For Turnip Prize 2023 - But is it art?
By Calla Mitchell
“Rubbish”, “poor standard”, “absolute bollocks”, “lack of effort”, “crap”. These titles of offence are in fact translative to shiny gold badges of honour and glory in Turnip Prize lingo. What is this incredible and outlandish Turnip Prize? Held annually in the village Wedmore, the founder, Trevor Prideaux, flatters it so; it is “a crap art competition…you can enter anything you like, but it must be rubbish”.
Submissions are effort-less, rubbish and cringingly pun-y; the winners of the Turnip Prize are elevated to an applaudable status of “high quality rubbish”, and entries “not shit enough” are disqualified. Funnily, the competition first gained publicity in 2007 after a mock-piece on Banksy, ‘By the Banksea’ was disqualified for not being “shit enough” and “trying too hard”. The winner of this year was Bracy Vermin’s ‘Tea P’; quite literally tea bags placed as the letter P (what rubbish).
This 25th year of the competition has welcomed 193 entries of “usual poor standard” from around the world. And the organisers have finally released their four shortlisters (or, in Turnip Prize lingo, their favourite worst) for this year!
Ike Price, ‘Inflation’, Photo by Trevor Prideaux via BBC News
ChickKing the Third of Somerset, ‘Coronation Chicken,’ Photo by Trevor Prideaux via BBC News
The shortlisters and their thoughtful titles read as follows: ‘Inflation’ by Ike Price is a pink balloon only half blown up and still attached to the pump (lazy); ‘Coronation Chicken’ by ChickKing the Third of Somerset is a plastic crown placed on top of a KFC ‘it’s finger lickin’ good’ box (tacky and cheap); Party Gate by Mr Keep Calm is a simple gate wearing a brown party hat (boring); and finally A Eye by G.P.T Chat Esq. is a carboard square with a plastic eye stuck on its middle (grammatically incorrect title, careless). These shortlisted artworks certainly make for a tough ‘most rubbish’ competition. Each entree explores the rewardable themes of low effort, dullness, cheap material usage and cringingly pun-y titles; all of an understandable impressiveness for Prideaux to have selected.
Mr Keep Calm, ‘Party Gate’, Photo by Trevor Prideaux via BBC News
G.P.T Chat Esq, ‘A Eye’. Photo by Trevor Prideaux via BBC News
Aesthetically, submissions for the Turnip Prize explore the coined term ‘Readymade’ by Marcel Duchamp (urinal guy) and adopt worthless objects of everyday usability which they decorate with a cringe pun or thoughtful title. Pretentiously, one could deliberate the agenda of the Turnip Prize is to challenge what art is, question the monetary value foisted by gallery setting, and assert the artist’s role as skilled creator. Whilst their intentions are rather more focused on the “crap” then the meaningful, the agenda of contemporary art is their close relative which they mock and spoof (like brother and sister, or cousin and cousin).
The name Turnip Prize is indeed a play on the infamous Turner Prize. Its satirisation of the prestigious award was in fact birthed by a lively pub discussion on the contemporary installation of Tracy Emin’s shortlisted ‘My Bed’ in 1999. Emin’s installation manifests ‘Readymade’ sculpture though her translation of real-world items into artform. By exhibiting this, she debunked any gallery niceties through its dirty and dishevelled state, and in turn the gallery setting furnished her installation with the prestigious air essential for any ‘Readymade’ to become an artform. Successfully, the artwork was sold to Charles Saatchi for £150,000 in 1998 and later in 2014 the installation was auctioned at Christie’s for £2.5 million. The actual Turnip prize spoofs this riotously with their ‘hit the jackpot’ ‘turnip impaled by a rusty nail’ prize. Lie Instate, 2022 winner, joked he was delighted “to win this prestigious award” and he “can now feed my five children this Christmas”.
The ‘pub joke’ of a prize continues to successfully cultivate bad art and each year the numbers of entries increase. The prize winner for this year will be announced on the 5th of December so do stay tuned! My bet is on the ‘Party Gate’ (no explanation needed), and I leave you with a question supposed by the Turnip Prize: “we know its crap…but is it art?”.
Bibliography
Inglis, Louis. “Turnip Prize 2023: Spoof arts award finalists announced”. BBC News. November, 27, 2023. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-67546663.
“Turnip prize 2022: Cue Jumpers announced as winner in Somerset ceremony”. Itv News. December, 8, 2022. https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2022-12-08/find-out-which-entry-has-won-this-years-turnip-prize.
“’Don’t try hard’ for Turnip Prize”. Somerset BBC News. November, 3, 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/somerset/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_8340000/8340481.stm.