Simeon Barclay (l) and Tanoa Sasraku (r)
The Turner Prize 2026 shortlist has been announced, and this year’s artists include both Workplace’s Simeon Barclay and Vardaxoglou’s Tanoa Sasraku.
The Turner Prize is presented each year by Tate Britain, working with museums and galleries across the UK. For the 2026 prize the exhibition will be at MIMA, the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, from September 2026 to March 2027. The other shortlisted artists are Kira Freije and Marguerite Humeau and the winner will be announced in December 2026 at a ceremony at MIMA.
Simeon Barclay was nominated for his performance “The Ruin”, commissioned by the Roberts Institute of Art and also presented at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and New Art Exchange, Nottingham. The hour-long spoken word performance, featuring live percussion by James Larter and horn by Isaac Shieh, draws on Barclay's upbringing in Huddersfield and his lived experience of the industrial landcape of northern England. The jury praised Barclay's debut performance for its exploration of Britishness, class, race and masculine identity, through an evocative, experimental use of language and a psychologically immersive soundscape.
Tanoa Sasraku has been nominated for her solo exhibition Morale Patch at The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London. The installation explores geopolitical ideas through object-like sculptures, works on paper and film. The exhibition focuses on recent political and military histories of oil through a highly conceptual installation that borrows from the visual language of the corporate world. The jury praised the precision and sophistication of the installation, noting how it addresses complex historical issues with strong contemporary resonances, and its use of a clinical, minimalist display that conveys both irony and seriousness.
The Turner Prize started in 1984 and is one of the world's best-known prizes for the visual arts, promoting debate around new developments in contemporary British art.
The Turner Prize jury is chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain and this year includes Sarah Allen of the South London Gallery, Joe Hill from the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Sook-Kyung Lee of The Whitworth and the University of Manchester, and Alona Pardo from the Arts Council Collection, UK.
