The Turner Prize comes to Bradford 2025

It’s coming towards the end of the year which celebrated the West Yorkshire city of Bradford being honoured with the title of City of Culture 2025. After an eclectic year of cultural and artistic events, the city was rewarded by becoming host of The Turner Prize – the UK’s best known visual arts award.

An exhibition showcasing the 4 finalists work takes place at The Cartwright Art Gallery in Lister Park, Bradford. It opened in late September and it runs till 22^nd February 2026. Tickets are free but need to be booked online in advance as entrance is at set times to limit he exhibition from getting too crowded. I was lucky enough to visit the exhibition and can highly recommend it.

But before, I talk about the artists and their work it is worth just reminding people as to the history of The Turner Prize which sometimes has had highly controversial finalists and winners – for example Tracey Emin’s infamous “My Bed” being a finalist in 1999.

The Turner Prize was founded in 1984 by The Tate. The award is actually named after the famous watercolourist JMW Turner who often visited Yorkshire to stay with his friend Horton Fawkes. In his day Turner was considered as a pretty controversial artist who often shook up the art establishment in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s.

He is now seen as one of the greatest British painters of all time, so to host the Turner Prize on the 250^thAnniversary of his birth makes the honour of Bradford hosting the prize extra special.

The criteria for judging the prize is that the artist has to either have been born or is based in the UK and celebrates their recent exhibition works. The finalists are decided upon by a panel of independent experts and a winner is chosen from a shortlist of 4. This year’s winner will be announced on 9^th December 2025 and will receive £25,000.

The four artists whose work is showcased across the two floors at The Cartwright Hall this year are:

Zadie Xa – Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors are Whales, and Earth Remembers Everything

Her work is all about showcasing other alternative world’s. With her Canadian and Korean heritage she explores cultural traditions as well as spirituality and inter species communication.

To enter this room, you have to take shoes off or wear covers over your feet as there is a reflective floor (they also recommend women don’t wear skirts!). I found this room very trippy and colourful, with definite hippy vibes given off with paintings, soundscapes, textiles and sculpture.

I guess I found the explanation of “what the inhabitants of the oceans would say to us if they could talk”, a bit contrived and the sort of thing a 6^th form art student may come up with, so whilst visually impactful I didn’t think it was “different or original” enough to warrant its finalist spot.

It was very colourful and looking at how school kids had voted using stickers in the hallway of the exhibition it did seem to be the most popular room for young visitors. But I guess whilst it looked interesting, it didn’t really move me personally.

Mohammed Sami – After the Storm

The artist Mohammed Sami explains that he uses “metaphor and ambiguity to create paintings about memory and conflict”. His Turner entry is based on a recent exhibition he had at Blenheim Palace where lots of paintings hanging before his arrived glorify warfare over the years. Sami wanted to challenge these perceptions, particularly having spent his youth in a war torn Iraq.

I really liked his work and the paintings appear fragmented and distorted, so that you recognise the scene but then there will be something which distorts this view.

What I liked about his work and found more interesting that Zadie Xa’s work was that rather than trying to spell things out for you, there are visual metaphors which challenge you to put your own view or spin on what each work is about or represents.

He states that he wants the viewer to “consider the causes and effects of conflict”.

Rene Matic – As Opposed to the Truth

Matic works primarily with photography, but incorporates sculpture and sound.

She explained that “amidst a backdrop of right wing populism, violence and political hypocrisy, that people can still hold onto each other and care for each other’. Her background as a queer, mixed race woman growing up in Peterborough has helped define her work.

The centre piece of the room is a huge flag with No Place on one side and For Violence on the other.

She also has a growing collection of black dolls which have been damaged and salvaged for an artwork called Restoration which is about caring for this who have been left behind.

Her work was thought provoking, but I didn’t really see anything new here which hadn’t been done before with her use of photographic collages and flags with messages. Very worthy, but perhaps my least favourite exhibition in terms of originality.

Nnena Kalu – Drawing 21

This was my favourite exhibition space even before I found out the backstory of the artist later that day. Kalu creates large scale hanging sculptures and drawings. 

Her bold abstract works use a base of a structural form such as old bags, tubes or boxes which she wraps in colourful materials from fabric, paper, clingfilm, VHS tape, rope, ribbons or plastics to create something resembling cocoons. I started to imagine animal forms with some of the hangings resembling llamas in my imagination.

The organisation which helped Nnela reach her artistic potential was Action Space and it was their petitioning her local council in 2010 to allow them access to studio space in empty shops that gave Nnela the space to start creating her large colourful sculptures.

She also specialises in abstract drawings of powerful vast hypnotic, vortexes with swirling over lapping lines often drawn with her less dominant hand.

It wasn’t until I had been to the exhibition and researched the artist a bit more that I found out that she was the first “learning, disabled artist to make the Turner shortlist”. She has limited verbal communication, being extremely autistic and relying on support care and council support.

She is unable to speak or say what her works represent or explain thought processes behind them. This means the viewer has more scope for creating their own narrative about the artworks and with all art, I think it should be about what the viewer reads into the work.

So, we will have to wait and see who wins this years Turner Prize for another month, but if I was a judge my order of merit would be:

1.     Nnela Kalu

2.     Mohammed Sami

3.     Zadie Xa

4.     Rene Matic

Go along and see the exhibition yourself – you can register for tickets here https://bradford2025.co.uk/event/turner-prize/

And please let me know what you think?