Within the first ten minutes of last night’s televised Turner Prize ceremony, someone had twice declared that the award was a ‘concept’. I must say, this was news to me: I’d always believed it was an award for contemporary art that existed to create a buzz around young artists who otherwise couldn’t get arrested. More often than not, one of the nominees is chosen to manufacture a bit of controversy – hardly the most noble objective, but it can make for a good half hour of telly.
Kim Gordon forgetting what year we were in aside, what we got instead was in no sense good TV, but then that’s not really the point. This year’s point of contention was in fact Assemble, the 18-strong architectural collective nominated for their visionary urban regeneration project in a rundown area of Toxteth. They were polite, gracious and decidedly un-gobby. Yet their nomination and subsequent win are, I think, a cause for genuine controversy.
I first came across Assemble a few years ago, when they turned an abandoned petrol station on London’s Clerkenwell Road into a fully functioning cinema.
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