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Ruskin Alumna Helen Marten wins the Turner Prize 2016

The Ruskin is delighted to announce that Helen Marten (BFA 2008) is the 2016 winner of the Turner Prize, the second Ruskin alumna to win the prize, after Elizabeth Price's success in 2012.

Night-blooming genera / Helen Marten

Professor Brian Catling, Head of the Ruskin School of Art, taught Helen while she studied here.

He said: 'We are all tremendously excited by the news of Helen’s success, but not remotely surprised. Helen showed a distinctive talent at the Ruskin, and an exceptional energy in putting her ideas into practice.

'She was one of the leaders of her year. There is no doubt she will go on to have a brilliant career as an artist.'

At 31, Helen Marten was the youngest nominee for this year’s prize. She said she would share the £25,000 Turner prize award with her fellow nominees, Michael Dean, Anthea Hamilton and Josephine Pryde, just as she announced her intention to share the £30,000 Hepworth prize with the three other short-listed artists, Phyllida Barlow, David Medalla and Steven Claydon.

The chair of judges, Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson, said: ‘The judges were impressed by the complexity of the work, its amazing formal qualities, its disparate materials and techniques and also how it relates to the world ... how it often suggests meaning, but those meanings are all in flux somehow. One image, one form becomes another.’

Information about the Turner Prize 2016 and Helen's artwork can be found here

Details about the Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate and more information about the work of all the nominees can be found here.  The exhibition continues until 2nd January 2017. 

Helen, whose Serpentine show earlier this year was been much applauded, received the inaugural Hepworth award in a ceremony at the Hepworth Wakefield Gallery on 18 November.

The Hepworth prize, which recognises a British or UK-based artist of any age, at any stage in their career, who has made a significant contribution to the development of contemporary sculpture. Simon Wallis, Director of The Hepworth Wakefield and chair of the judging panel said:

“Helen Marten is one of the strongest and most singular voices working in British art today. Her refined craft and intellectual precision address our relationship to objects and materials in a digital age. We believe that Marten is a fitting winner of the inaugural Hepworth Prize for Sculpture, which celebrates the legacy of one of Britain’s finest sculptors.”

For more information, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38212014 and  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/nov/17/helen-marten-wins-hepworth-prize-for-sculpture