The Turner Prize, organised by Tate, is one of the world’s leading prizes for contemporary art. The prize is awarded each year to a British visual artist. ‘British’ can mean an artist working mostly in Britain or an artist born in Britain and working globally. This year’s four nominees were chosen by a jury of artists and curators. The artists are Simeon Barclay, Kira Freije, Marguerite Humeau and Tanoa Sasraku.
The winner of this year’s Turner Prize will be chosen in December. Each of the four artists were selected based on work that has been shown before, around the UK and internationally. The artists have collaborated with the MIMA team to reimagine and plan their work for the exhibition at MIMA.
Please note that you will need to book a free ticket to attend. When booking, you will select an arrival slot. You may arrive at any time from the start of your booked slot until the start of the next slot. For example, if you book the 12 – 2pm slot, you can arrive at any time between 12 and 2pm. If the Turner Prize 2026 galleries are busy, you may be asked to wait briefly until there is space available.
Marguerite Humeau works across installation, sculpture, video, sound and drawing. Her sculptures reimagine prehistoric and possible future beings. Like what if elephants had evolved to be the dominant species instead of humans? Nominated for her exhibition Torches, Humeau encourages us to imagine alternative worlds, one in which human extinction is an evolutionary fact. The sculptures combine organic and inorganic materials, including beeswax, wasp venom, yeast, bronze and marble. Some artworks grow and decay during the exhibition, reflecting cycles of creation and destruction. Collaboration is central to Humeau’s practice, working with specialists both within and outside of the scientific realm such as zoologists, engineers, clairvoyants and foragers to explore new interpretations of the world and its life forms.
Simeon Barclay was nominated for the Turner Prize for The Ruin, a live performance of spoken word accompanied by percussion and horn. However, Barclay works across sculpture, film, performance and mixed media installation to examine how identity is constructed and performed. Presented in immersive environments with text and image, film installation and sculpture. Barclay explores the complex and contradictory narratives that shape the modern British experience, including ideas of memory, class, Blackness, inheritance and masculinity. Materials such as aluminium, acrylic and bronze are the basis for this work, informed by Barclay’s own experience working in the manufacturing industry.
Concerned with cultural meaning embedded within raw materials, Tanoa Sasraku works across sculpture drawing and film. Rooted in the symbolic properties of land, Sasraku’spractice incorporates textiles and pattern, by stitching, soaking and layering she reveals hidden structures of colour and pattern. Her exhibition, Morale Patch, which received her the Turner Prize nomination, consisted of works on paper, found objects and sculpture. The largest piece within the installation incorporated emblems and mementos connected to the oil industry and crude oil encapsulated within paperweights. Examining crude oil’s connection to national identity, geopolitics and systems of global power.
Kira Freije works with metal, fabric, light and found materials to create sculptural figures that reflect both individual and shared emotional experiences. Creating casts from the faces of people within her life, and her own hands and feet, the figures are built from welded steel structures and are poised to create impressions of scenes, connections or encounters. Found and crafted elements give shape to the exhibition that received the Turner Prize nomination, Unspeak the Chorus. Made of 20 sculpted figures that connect the human and animal world, animated through cinematic lighting.
