{"id":610365,"date":"2026-09-24T14:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T14:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/610365\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T14:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T14:22:09","slug":"turner-prize-review-soulful-cyborgs-go-into-battle-with-a-stack-of-massive-hobnobs-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/610365\/","title":{"rendered":"Turner prize review \u2013 soulful cyborgs go into battle with a stack of massive Hobnobs | Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Turner prize<\/a> is most exciting when you passionately support one of the artists and want to convince everyone she\u2019s a genius. In this year\u2019s show at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, I felt that thrill so strongly, I want to get a T-shirt made to support my artist like the Boro scarves and banners you see around here.<\/p>\n

Kira Freije has her own floor, separated by a tall flight of stairs from the three other shortlisted artists, because apparently the fine watery mist in her installation could damage their fragile materials. Yet setting her apart seems like a statement and it\u2019s justified. She shows 33 lifesize statues of tragicomic steampunk cyborgs, individual works but gathered in a vaporous apocalyptic wasteland, with an impact and resonance that\u2019s on a level of its own.<\/p>\n

Our faces and hands, Freije understands, are what make us human: these are the only fully human thing left about her figures, as if a rogue AI has replaced the rest. They have hollow frames for bodies, hard metal replacements for flesh, bone and soul but with life-cast faces soliciting empathy. You walk among them, come close to gaze into an anguished visage or at a fallen figure desperately clutching at another\u2019s steel ankle. This is a pathetic world where humanity is holding on as a ghost in the machine.<\/p>\n

\u2018A pathetic world where humanity is holding on\u2019 \u2026 a figure by Kira Freije. Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

It\u2019s coarse, passionate stuff, with rusty buckets of fetid liquid and a mangy sofa in the bronze steamy glow undercutting any sense of shiny futurism. This is not the future. It\u2019s the way we live now. Freije\u2019s cyborgs touch one another tenderly, offer support, cuddle steel-framed pets. The only surviving things that matters, says this stunning installation, are love and compassion.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry for rushing straight to my favourite. I will try to do the others justice. I was really engaged by Simeon Barclay. His room is a dramatic tableau, reminiscent of immersive theatre company Punchdrunk<\/a>, that leads you past giant photographs of a man reading a tabloid newspaper \u2013 \u201cLeave \u2019em to die\u201d blares the headline \u2013 and a glowing melancholy landscape, then through a labyrinth beneath a neon sign into a central space suggesting a living room.<\/p>\n

Glowing melancholy landscape \u2026 inside Simeon Barclay\u2019s room. Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Barclay\u2019s recorded voice declaims poetry denouncing a northern, working-class man \u2013 his father? \u2013 who lost his way in hardened, selfish masculinity. It\u2019s visceral and haunting but a little disparate, the connection between elements loose. What exactly has the father figure done wrong, what is the specific loss Barclay laments? Maybe he should work it up into a more precise memoir or novel.<\/p>\n

Marguerite Humeau is all baroque form and zero content. Beneath her wacky creations there\u2019s probably something about nature, ecology, the planet. But what you experience is a self-conscious cocktail of eccentricity and brittle originality as she mixes substances you wouldn\u2019t guess in a million years in the kind of art publicists call \u201calchemical\u201d. Her sprawling sculpture The Holder of Wasp Venom, for instance, contains \u201cNatural beeswax, microcrystalline wax, pigments, 150-year-old walnut (cause of death: unknown), handblown glass and wasp venom.\u201d Amazing. But it still looks to me like a stack of giant biscuits. There is no feel of the materials, none of that intense presence of felt or fat you get in the genuinely alchemical art of Joseph Beuys<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No feel of the materials \u2026 The Holder of Wasp Venom by Marguerite Humeau. Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s another dimension to Humeau\u2019s art \u2013 a soundscape of high-pitched warbles, heartbeat pulses and elephantine bellows which uncannily follow you around her two rooms. This psychedelic soundtrack doesn\u2019t need to be understood: you go with the flow. Her sculptures too are best if you just enjoy their weirdness, drink in the wasp venom and let your mind nibble at a giant hallucinogenic Hobnob.<\/p>\n

I like the big, brown abstract agglomeration of textures hanging at one end of Tanoa Sasraku<\/a>\u2019s room. A roomful might have been sublime. Instead Sasraku also shows a table top covered with little glass paperweights. These all hold tiny bulbous bottles and bubbles containing a dark viscous liquid \u2013 more alchemy, but this time it\u2019s about the oil industry. I don\u2019t want to make it sound more interesting than it is. You can only get close enough to make sense of objects at the edges of the space-hogging installation and their tininess precludes emotional or intellectual impact beyond an \u201ca-ha!\u201d. Once you get that Sasraku is protesting against big oil you\u2019ve got all the satisfaction her work offers. She is by far the least giving artist here.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Sign up to Art Weekly<\/p>\n

Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions<\/p>\n

The least giving artist here \u2026 Tanoa Sasraku\u2019s room. Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

But the truth is I\u2019m prejudiced. The moment I saw Freije\u2019s room I wanted her to win. Her gathering of lost souls could be in Dante\u2019s Inferno: you want to speak to these tormented figures, ask them how they came to be here. And if there\u2019s an echo of Dante, there\u2019s also an affinity for Rodin whose Gates of Hell<\/a> the medieval author inspired.<\/p>\n

\u2018Their tininess precludes impact\u2019 \u2026 a Tanoa Sasraku paperweight. Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Dante, Rodin. I could throw in Bacon, Giacometti and Kienholz<\/a>, which is just another way of saying that Freije makes art about the desperate nature of being human. A sceptic might accuse her of apocalyptic overkill, steamy sensationalism, but it\u2019s tempered by humour \u2013 look at the cute pets. As for apocalyptic overkill, read the papers.<\/p>\n

What a blistering artist and what a classy year for the Turner. I have been hard on Barclay and Humeau but their rooms are full of personality and verve and they make it a truly competitive shortlist, with a sense of occasion. This feels like an event, like it matters \u2013 which the Turner prize has often failed to achieve in recent years. I hope it will inspire wild and eloquent disagreements. Humeau will certainly have her fans but, win or lose, Freije is a great modern artist. If you want to see the future of art, get yourself to Middlesbrough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Turner prize is most exciting when you passionately support one of the artists and want to convince…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-610365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}