TURNER PRIZE 2009
TATE BRITAIN
STUCKIST TURNER DEMO

See below for reports on the demo
at the press launch on 5 October and one on the Prize day 7 December.

See the demo leaflet: front • back


Design of 45mm demo badge

Turner Prize: 7 December 2009 Demo photos here See " Stuckists protest at Turner Prize" on Culture24 7.12.09. Archive on 4 - The Turner Prize Turnaround, broadcast 6.12.09 on BBC Radio 4: listen again. Stuckists are mentioned and speak from archive recordings. The opening quote is from this Newsnight broadcast, as is the material about the foundation of the Stuckists at 42:16. Stuckism on Martin Creed's lights going on and off is at 47:03. "One of the founders of the Stuckists, a group that champions real art, said that this year’s prize had turned into ‘a Monty Python sketch’ with the head of Tate Britain, Sir Nicolas Serota, ‘standing behind the counter praising art that has all the life of a dead parrot’." - Daily Mail 8.12.09 Stuckists carry out their "traditional protest": "'The Turner Prize bears the same relationship to art as a pantomime horse does to show jumping,' said the movement's co-founder Charles Thomson." - The Independent 8.12.09 AFP (Agence France-Presse) report also carried in the Gulf Times, Yahoo News, Google news, National Post (Canada), MSN, , France24 and others. On the winner, Richard Wright: "Charles Thomson of the Stuckists pulled no punches in saying, 'It's not art; it's wallpaper'. " - Spoonfed 8.12.09 Stuckist demos mentioned in LA Times 7.12.09. John Bourne, Edgeworth Johnstone and Shelley Li were interviewed at the demo by Barbara Wesel of ARD 1 German radio. The demo was shown at the beginning of Channel 4's 7 pm news coverage of the Turner Prize event. The Stuckist Turner demo was featured on 3Sat German TV station Kulturzeit programme, 7.20 - 8 pm, Tues 8 Dec (repeated 9.05 am Wed). Alex Hopkins mentions Stuckist demo in 2000 and "The Stuckists even announcing they would not be protesting in 2007 because of the 'lameness' of the show" on openmagazine.com 8.12.09 There was a photo of the October 2009 demo in Time Out, 3 - 9 Dec 2009 (page 55) and a photo of the 2001 demo in The Faster Times 6.12.09. Video by The Guardian on the Prize starts with shots of the Stuckist demo. The video is also on The Guardian web site 8.12.09

Press launch: 5 October 2009
Demo photos here

WATCH VIDEOS ABC (Australia) video: click "Turner Prize triggers art debate." ITV news 7 pm: clips 1 and 3: "Some things at the Turner never change: a picket in the rain by the Stuckists, the group of artists so doggedly against the whole prize and the interests it stirs." See video of Joe Machine and demo: The Independent 5.10.09. Also here: pics 15 and 16 (and for video click "Turner Prize provokes protest"). Charles Thomson was interviewed on Sky News 8.45am, 5.10.09. ITN Extreme PRESS REPORTS Also: Reuters, Life, Times-Series, Artnet, Artinfo, Spoonfed 5.10.09. The Herald 6.10.09. Reuters report on Yahoo News, Tiscali News, ABC (Australia), Stuff (New Zealand), National Post (Canada), Aktuálne (Czech Republic), Straits Times, Ottawa Citizen, Kuwait News, Malaysian Insider, Oman Tribune, IBTimes, US Daily. Blogs: NYC Art 6.10.09, Coxsoft 2.10.09 "The Turner Prize is a kind of Mad Cow Disease product of the art world, if you want to put it that way. It’s a kind of delusion that has taken hold and in 50 years people will look back, just as we look back on a lot of Victorian art, and think, 'it was fashionable but it has not lasted'." - Charles Thomson, Euronews 6.10.09. A search of Google for "Turner Prize 2009" as of 5.10.09 gives the following result (still unchanged as of 9.10.09): This is the information in the meta tag on the Tate web site. Presumably they haven't bothered to change the names from last year's nominees, because it's the same thing every year anyway, so it doesn't make much difference what the nominees are called. Rehearsing for the demo . Left: Shelley Li. Right: Edgeworth Johnstone. Centre: Herr Von Stuck. Download high resolution print image here. Charles Thomson, Co-founder of the Stuckists. Download high resolution print image here.

NOMINEES ANNOUNCED April 2009 National Post (Canada): Stuckist victory? Artnet: The Flatline Prize? Coxsoft Art News: "badge says it all" Culture24 (28.4.09): ""The Turner Prize has been dying for some time and has now flatlined," protested [Stuckist] co-founder Charles Thomson, charging the Prize with showing "no heart or brain activity." "The only interesting thing about the Turner Prize is how it manages to find such totally uninteresting artists every year," he added, having run out of badges embellished with "The Turner Prize is Crap" on them last year. "It's a parody of art and impossible to give any serious consideration."" Spoonfed (28.4.09): "There’s a certain irony, I think, in noting that, were it not for the vociferous criticism of this worldwide group of figurative painters, even fewer would take any notice of the annual storm in a teacup that is the Turner Prize." And on Artc in Chinese The Sunday Times (24.5.09): "the Turner prize itself, meanwhile, is now dubbed by some in the art world the Flatline prize to recognise that its conceptual novelties no longer create the impact they did once. Stuckist, a movement founded in 1999 to promote figurative art, has claimed that the Turner is on an “anti-painting crusade”." Who are the nominees? See the work on BBC site: It's still crap. The nominees are someone with a chemistry set, a Habitat designer, a maker of insipid patterns, and an illustrator for John Lewis card department. As nominee, Richard Wright, said, "The most important thing about the work is that it is destroyed." And the sooner, the better.

Art Clown of the Year Award 2009 Nominees not yet decided. Proposals welcome.

back to top