The Belfaster Array Collective won the Turner Prize

A group of Northern Irish artists and activists won the famous art award this year with an installation in the pub.

The Belfaster Array Collective won Britain’s most prestigious Turner Prize in 2021. The announcement was made on Wednesday evening at a gala at Coventry Cathedral by Pauline Black, singer with Coventry-based folk band The Selecter. The winners will receive £25,000.

For the award, launched in 1984 and named after British painter Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), the jury initially chose only the shortlisted groups of artists. The choice fell to Array Collective, which works on social and political issues in Northern Ireland in collaborative actions by artists and activists and engages with traditional identities and ancient myths in a playful way. At the “Herbert Gallery and Museum of Art” in Coventry, where the works of all the nominees have been shown since the end of September, they set up a kind of pub with the immersive installation “Druithaib’s Ball”.

More nominations

For the first time, only art collections were shortlisted. These London artists include the Black Obsidian Sound System, the Cooking Sections in London, the Gentle/Radical Project launched in Cardiff by artists, community workers, authors and others, and the Project Art Works collective from Hastings.

Previous Turner Prize winners have been Anish Kapoor, Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, Anthony Gormley and Susan Phillips.

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