Collective that renews housing wins Britain’s Turner art prize

Ironically, Scottish artists missed out completely on the shortlist for this year’s prize, despite an incredible run of nominees in recent years, with all four of the 2015 nominees based in London.

The group were invited to work on the Toxteth estate in Liverpool by residents fighting plans to demolish houses in the area and were recognised by judges for their work with communities.

Assemble beat three fellow nominees and were praised for creating more “accessible” art which can be enjoyed by people as part of their daily lives.

The prize, set up in 1984, is presented to a British artist under the age of 50 for “an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work” in the previous 12 months.

“The jury has awarded the prize to Assemble who work in tandem with communities to realise a ground-up approach to regeneration, city planning and development in opposition to corporate gentrification”, the jury said in Glasgow, the first time the event has been held in Scotland.

“They draw on long traditions of artistic and collective initiatives that experiment in art, design and architecture”. Speaking after the announcement on Channel 4, author and broadcaster Muriel Gray said: “I think it’s changed the nature of the Turner Prize because I don’t think it is modern art”.

The London-based group blurred the line between art and architecture with their Granby Four Streets project. The jury was chaired by Penelope Curtis, who has served for five years as director of Tate Britain and is now moving to the Calouste Gulbenkian museum in Lisbon.

It adds: “Their architectural spaces and environments promote direct action and embrace a DIY sensibility”. Bonnie Camplin, 44, was nominated for her project “The Military Industrial Complex”, which used video and a study to explore invented realities. DOUG is a performative work which takes the form of nine songs for six voices.

-Nicole Wermers, who is said to “fuse problems of design and consumerism” in installation works such as “Infrastruckur” at Herald Street, London. Her installation Infrastruktur adopted the glossy aesthetics and materials of modernist design and high fashion, alluding to themes of lifestyle, class, consumption and control.