Kalu's Turner Prize win is a standout victory for real art

The sculptor's success is a seismic moment for diversity, but equally as significant, argues Mark Hudson, is her emphasis on elements the competition has lost sight of in recent years

- Mark Hudson

Nnena Kalu, a Glasgow-born neurodivergent artist who produces improvised sculptures from miles of old video tape and other discarded materials, was the surprise winner of the Turner Prize 2025, announced at a gala dinner in Bradford on Tuesday.

Much has been made, and rightly so, of the fact that Kalu is the first learning-disabled artist to be nominated for the Turner Prize, let alone win it. Her victory, though, is seismic not only for equality and diversity reasons, but for the emphasis her work places on the visual, tactile and experiential in art - values that have lost primacy in recent years, when the prize has been dominated by artists recontextualising existing objects. Last year's recipient, Jasleen Kaur, won with a Ford Escort draped in a giant doily. This most recent incarnation of Britain's biggest art prize seems to herald the welcome return of artists physically making things.

Also in the business of making things is Iraq-born Mohammed Sami, who had been the bookies' clear favourite to win. A leading figure in what is widely regarded as a “revival” in British painting, Sami creates enigmatic meditations on his home country's war-torn history. Reviewing his exhibition in September this year, I singled out a vast and eerily peopleless battlescape,