A SAFE BET

Mohammed Sami seems a shoo-in for the Turner Prize 2025, but his winning it would feel like a weirdly retrogressive move for this once controversial prize writes Mark Hudson

- Mark Hudson

Say what you like about the artists on this year's Turner Prize shortlist: they know how to make a physical impact. Zadie Xa hangs her visionary paintings on acid-tinged walls (and I mean acid in that sense) above a reflective gold floor that seems to double the size of the already large space. Rene Matić's photographs of political demonstrations and queer subculture come with a soundscape of contemporary voices loud enough to make your hair stand on end, while Nnena Kalu's suspended sculptures, formed from miles of VHS cassette tape, clingfilm and gauzy material, look fantastic against the neo-Baroque wood panelling of Bradford's Cartwright Hall.

True to recent form, Britain's best-known art prize seems as if it's out to make some kind of point with the demographic of its 2025 shortlist: none of the four nominees have typically British names, one is non-binary, and another is neurodivergent. Way more important, however, is that this feels like the year in which artists have returned to the act of physically making things. After years when it was dominated by those whose work recontextualised existing objects (see 2024's winning installation by Jasleen Kaur, which featured a car draped in a doily), the shortlist this year comprises two painters - in the oil-on-canvas sense - and a sculptor. Only one artist, the photographer Matić, works with “nontraditional materials”.

There's a generally upbeat vibe, and a sense - barely conceivable in the light of most recent Turner Prize exhibitions - that we can approach the event through the lens of good, old-fashioned visual pleasure. Perish the thought.