Turner Prize 2025 (Cartwight Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, 27 September 2025-22 February 2026)

I’ve got to the Turner Prize exhibition, in London every year for a decade and to the off-metropolitan ones sometimes — Gateshead, Coventry, Margate, Liverpool, Eastbourne, although not Hull as it had closed for the ceremony to be set up. Bradford looked doable and could be combined with sidetrips to Wakesfield and Leeds, indeed Leeds was the place to stay.

(Vague memories of a trip to the Science and Media Museum, Bradford, as a child and another trip in the 1990s, and one of those involved Muppets, and I’d done three hours in February to see some Hockney. This was an hour too much for a grey and beige city marshalled by roadworks.)

It’s easy to be snooty about the Prize and do a whole “What would Turner think?” thing and a fatuous “My five years old –” thing. I try to have an open mind, knowing that either I or the judges will be wrong.

First up, after watching the artists’ films, was Nnena Kalu, who is learning-disabled and seems mainly to communicate through her art. In 2013 she started drawing spirals and coils, building up over laid colours into storms and tempests. She made a leap into 3D, with coils of rope, gaffa tape, paper, fabric and VHS tapes. I hadn’t recognised the name, but she’d had something at the Walker Gallery “Conversations” exhibition. I liked them, but not hugely.

Because of a queue, I made a tactical mistake and went to see Mohammed Sami next. Sami, born in Baghdad, is perhaps this year’s token painter. His work is very disturbing and traumatic — but it’s aftermath rather than the horror itself. There’s the view of the shadow of a fan across a table where an interview or interrogation has taken place. Or hundreds of hoof prints in the sand and something red in colouration … blood? I spent a lot of time with these. There’s nods to Brueghel and other European painters, and I note the sunflowers. (Some of the paintings have a 3D element or indentations.)

And then the queue for Zadie Xa had died down — you have to take off or cover your shoes, as the floor is mirrored. The room contained various large paintings, baubles and shells hanging from the ceiling, and a sound scape. I like individual works, but the immersion was a little stressful. There’s clearly a complex, multicultural mythos going on and I was reminded of Tai Shani from the Margate shortlist. I got out sooner than I would have wished.

The final room was the smallest and Rene Matić, interesting enough from her film, a little underwhelming. There’s a bedsheet operating as a flag/banner, a series of photographs of protests, clubs, friends and so on and a cabinet of Black dolls and other toys. Like Xa’s work, there wasn’t enough room for it to breathe, but Xa for me had made a virtue of it. I just don’t think the context was right.

For me, Sami was the standout and the artist I most want to see more work by. In fact, I went back to this room before I left. My guess is that Kalu will take the Prize — and I wouldn’t object.

And meanwhile, in the city where David Hockney was born, I suspect we’re down to a single picture of his on display, assuming the Science and Media Museum room has finished. It’s an early street scene, unrecogniseable and yet embryonic. There’s a Lowry — and another dozen or so example of the city’s municipal collection. I guess I need to come back.