December 3, 2024
Turner Prize 2024: Jasleen Kaur Wins With a Doily-Draped Classic Car
On the prize's 40th anniversary, Glasgow-based artist Jasleen Kaur took Britain's most talked-about art award with an installation steeped in memory, family and sound.
The Turner Prize turned 40 in 2024, and returned to its spiritual home at Tate Britain to crown Jasleen Kaur. The Glasgow-based, Scottish-Sikh artist won for an exhibition that wove together personal and political memory through sculpture, sound and everyday objects.
Its most photographed element was a vintage red Ford Escort smothered in a giant crocheted doily — at once tender and absurd, a meditation on family, faith and the things we inherit. Devotional music and pop tracks drifted through the rooms, turning the gallery into something closer to a living home.
Founded in 1984 and named after the radical painter J.M.W. Turner, the prize exists to spark public debate about new British art — and, four decades on, it still does exactly that, every single year.
Image: “Tate Britain 2020” — Julian Herzog (Website), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.