Charlotte Prodger been awarded the prestigious Turner Prize for her solo exhibition BRIDGIT/Stoneymollan Trail at Bergen Kunsthall in Norway. The announcement was made on the 4th of December at a ceremony held at Tate Britain, London.
Her exhibition brought together two of her videos, one of which was a series of short clips describing her experience of coming out as gay in rural Scotland. Her work was praised ‘for the nuanced way in which she deals with identity politics, particularly from a queer perspective.’ stated the Goldsmiths press release.
The Tate director Alex Farquharson praised her work for dealing with gender as “as unfixed, as something fluid, as something not always conforming to society’s norms.”
Speaking after her award, Prodger said that she felt “very honoured, blown away, really. It’s quite surreal. It feels lovely.”
In response to her win, Patrick Loughry, the Warden of Goldsmiths said: “Charlotte is a thoroughly deserving winner and we hope that her example will inspire the next generation of young artists to push the boundaries of what art could and should be.”
Prodger works as an artist in Glasgow, having graduated from Goldsmiths with a BA in Fine Arts fin 2001. She has worked predominantly with moving images for the last 20 years. She has previously received the Margaret Tait Award in 2014 and the Paul Hamlyn Award in 2017.
The Turner Prize awards £ 25,000 to the winner and £ 5,000 to the other nominees. These included Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary independent research agency based on Goldsmiths, Luke Willis Thompson, and Naeem Mohaiemen.