The Turner Prize was set up in 1984 and remains one of the best-known prizes for the visual arts.

The prize is awarded to an artist for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the preceding year. Each year, an independent jury is selected to judge the prize. They draw up the shortlist after a process of public nominations. The four shortlisted artists then present works in an exhibition before the winner is announced in December. Artists are not judged on their Turner Prize show, the decision is based on the work for which they were nominated. The Turner Prize award is £40,000, with £25,000 going to the winner and £5,000 each to the other shortlisted artists.

The four shortlisted artists for the Turner Prize 2016 are:

Michael Dean
Working primarily in sculpture, Dean creates work that is concerned with the physical presentation of language. His sculptures and installations reference the everyday urban environment and familiar but aesthetically overlooked materials – from a rebar on a building site to the corrugated metal of a shop shutter. He is nominated for his exhibitions Sic Glyphs at South London Gallery and Qualities of Violence at de Appel arts centre, Amsterdam.

Anthea Hamilton
Hamilton works across sculpture, installation, performance and video, bringing a surrealist sensibility to popular culture and the mind-bending volume of stylised and sexualised imagery in the digital world. While rooted in the history of sculpture her work seduces the viewer with comic and unexpected combinations of images, materials and words, as well as dramatic shifts in scale. She is nominated for her solo exhibition Anthea Hamilton: Lichen! Libido! Chastity! at SculptureCenter, New York.

Helen Marten
Marten brings together a wide range of found objects and immaculately crafted elements in her sculptures. While suggestive of contemporary visual culture, as well as various kinds of art since the 60s, the work defies both form and meaning: it attracts and intrigues while also resisting interpretation and categorisation. She is nominated for projects including Lunar Nibs at the 56th Venice Biennale and the solo exhibition Eucalyptus Let Us In at Green Naftali, New York.

Josephine Pryde
Through photography and installation Pryde explores the very nature of image making and display. She is fascinated by the relationship between art and photography, of art as commodity and of the seductive qualities of the wider art world. Her work often calls into question the conventions of the gallery and the complex networks of the art world. She is nominated for her solo exhibition Lapses in Thinking by the Person I am at CCA Wattis, San Francisco.

The members of the Turner Prize 2016 jury are: 

Michelle Cotton, Director, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn

Tamsin Dillon, curator

Beatrix Ruf, Director, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Simon Wallis, Director, The Hepworth Wakefield.

The jury is chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain.

Turner Prize 2016
Tate Britain: Exhibition

27 September 2016 – 8 January 2017

www.tate.org.uk