Array Collective in the Media
Elephant piece by Ciara Hickey and Jane Morrow
Does the Turner Prize Deserve Better Art? No, But Array Collective Deserves Better Critics…
From childhood in our native Northern Ireland, we navigate this conflicted territory through a series of learned and intuited codes, language and allegiances. It is from this intricately nuanced and highly contested context that Array Collective have emerged. Based in Belfast, they were awarded the 2021 Turner Prize this December. They are the first winners from the region of the most high-profile award to be given in British art.
BBC NEWS
By David Levene for BBC News
Turner Prize 2021: Irish pub installation wins award
Belfast-based activist group the Array Collective, have been crowned winners of the prestigious Turner Prize 2021.
Judges praised the group for addressing social and political issues in Northern Ireland, and for translating their activism into artwork. Their work includes a mock Irish pub adorned in banners advocating reproductive rights and protesting against conversion therapy. They beat four other collectives to take the £25,000 prize. The award was presented by The Selecter singer Pauline Black at Coventry Cathedral on Wednesday evening during a live broadcast of BBC Radio 4's Front Row, presented by Samira Ahmed.
Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian
Photo by Garry Jones for the Tate 2021
The 11-strong Array collective on winning the Turner prize: ‘We’ll have to have a meeting about this!’
The Belfast artists built an illicit drinking den and filled it with banners, ashtrays and scrawled-on mirrors to create a pointed portrait of Northern Ireland. What will they do with the £25,000 prize?
It’s the morning after the night before, the night in which the 11-strong, Belfast-based Array Collective, along with two babes-in-arms and one tiny golden-haired child, stepped on to the podium at Coventry Cathedral in their sparkling finery to receive the Turner prize. Three of them – Emma Campbell, Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell and Stephen Millar – have volunteered to brave hangovers and speak for this group of friends. Each has their own artistic practice, but they won the prize in their guise as a collective, through which they campaign on such issues as women’s rights, language rights and LGBT rights, with wild costumes, clever banners and a great deal of dark humour.