Visiting professor shortlisted for prestigious Turner Prize

A visiting professor at Northumbria University is among the artists nominated for this year’s Turner Prize, an annual award that marks Britain’s most outstanding contributions to the arts.

Dr Ingrid Pollard, an interdisciplinary artist based in Northumberland, joined the University’s Department of Arts last year, contributing to research as well as developing her photographic and print-making works in its Arts studios.

Dr Pollard’s nomination is for her solo exhibition Carbon Slowly Turning, which is currently on display at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Kent.

Born in Guyana, Dr Pollard moved to London aged four and has played a leading role in photography since the early 1980s, documenting Black people’s creativity and presence and questioning social constructs such as Britishness and diversity.

Her work juxtaposes landscape and portraiture, drawing on photographs, prints, narrative and live and archival film and video to make race and ethnicity visible while enmeshed with ideas of the rural northern landscape.

She was most recently awarded the Baltic Artists’ Award in 2019, and over more than 20 years has amassed an impressive list of commissions, exhibitions and residencies across the country and in the US.

Speaking about her Turner Prize nomination, Dr Pollard said, “The Turner Prize nomination is great recognition for my practice and boost for the medium of photography. It is a pleasure to be engaged with a university in my local area. I look forward to developing relationships with the department and students.”

Dr Susan Ashley, Associate Professor in Creative and Cultural Industries Management at Northumbria, said: “Dr Pollard’s work perfectly underscores the Department of Arts and the wider University’s ambitions for research collaborations across faculties, and between our teaching and research threads of media, film, communications, fine art and visual studies.”

Professor of Art History, Dr Ysanne Holt added: “Through both her artistic and her teaching practice Dr Pollard embodies our department’s core principles of creativity, collaboration, participation, and inter and cross-disciplinarity.

“Through her work, she engages with issues of identity and challenges oppression, which is a commendable example we all wish to set for our students. I hope this latest accolade will help inspire more young artists, irrespective of background, to explore their practice.”

An exhibition of each of the Turner Prize nominees’ work will be held at Tate Liverpool between October 2022 and March 2023. The winner will be announced in December.

Northumbria University has a long-standing history with the Turner Prize. The Northumbria University Gallery within the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art hosted the Turner Prize exhibition in 2011 and Professor Christine Borland, also of the Department of Arts, was nominated for the Prize in 1997.

Northumbria University is now ranked fourth in the UK for research power in art and design in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework – an assessment of the quality of research undertaken at all UK universities.