For some inexplicable reason the Turner Prize has lacked excitement for me since 2003, but whenever the award night comes around I cannot but help have a strong bodily memory of that most remarkable night of my life three years ago. As the moment when the winner is announced draws near, whatever I think of the nominees, I find my mirror neurons firing off like a 20 million-gun salute in empathy with them. I missed the party last year as I was in Japan, so I was looking forward to the annual gathering of the clan.
The Stuckist protestors outside Tate Britain lend a festive air to the queue to get in. I was wearing my new rubber dress with inflatable collar. As I climbed the steps it gave me an air of confidence — there will not be a repeat performance of heartless paparazzi calling out: “You wore that dress last week.”
Once inside I started noisily predicting to anyone who would listen that I thought Tomma Abts would win, while checking out the celebrities over their shoulder. I think her work throws up the most interesting questions in the context of the Turner. It turns its back on the clamour.
I take a straw poll: people seem to think it is between the two women Abts and Rebecca Warren. I bump into an arts correspondent for a national newspaper and ask for her prediction and she reminds me that newsrooms are told the result earlier in the evening. I tell her my guess, she looks away slightly: is she biting back a smile? In 2003 I remember standing with my wife trying to read the body language of the judges at the pre-dinner drinks. Was Andrew Wilson avoiding eye contact with my wife through embarrassment at not choosing me?
On Monday night I chatted to Richard Wilson, nominated in 1988 and 1989, about the early days of the prize. Back then the Turner was not yet the fully fledged publicity machine we know today. In 1988 they did not even announce a shortlist, which denied the prize the lifeblood of gossip. It also felt as if it was doing the round of established names. Richard Long, who won in 1989 on his fourth inclusion, was so disaffected with the process by then that he turned down an invitation to the award ceremony and was informed of his victory by telephone in a pub in the West Country.
I bumped into Sarah Lucas, full of Christmas cheer having been preparing the Tate Christmas tree. I asked her what she thought of this year’s Turner. “I have progressed on from not giving a s*** to really not giving a s***,” she said twinkling. Sarah has famously turned down the chance to run for the prize, a move wonderfully consistent with her oeuvre.
The arrival on the London art scene of Sarah and her talented contemporaries was one of the factors that propelled the Turner into its hyped-up adolescence, which spanned the Nineties. The so-called YBAs made work that captured the imagination of the press and the public as well as the judges. The second factor was Charles Saatchi, who collected, exhibited and facilitated the rise of these new stars. The third was the director of the Tate, Nicholas Serota, who, along with Waldemar Januszczak, then at Channel Four, rejigged the prize into the now familiar format.
Many pundits bemoan the razzmatazz of the Turner and the proliferation of cultural prizes in general, feeling that they are undignified and inappropriately competitive in the arts. I think they are a good way to engage the public in the debate of what makes good art. In a world where a zillion cultural products beg for our attention, prizes strive to champion quality. If, in doing that, they occasionally include the media-friendly option, so be it.
I catch the eye of my successor, the charming Jeremy Deller. He has a keen nose for the Zeitgeist and agrees with my prediction. Deller’s win, I think, marked the beginning of the Turner entering a more confident, grown-up phase. Most of the artists who rose to prominence around the same time as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin had already been through the Turner process. When they were nominated, the Chapman brothers said it had to come around sometime, like jury duty.
This year there was no sit-down dinner, which detracts slightly from the sense of occasion but means there is more opportunity to circulate. Before anyone could get properly drunk, Serota was on the podium introducing tiny Yoko Ono. I could see only her top hat, even in my 5in heels which made me almost as tall as Antony Gormley. Yoko gave a gnomic address on the artist’s ability to change the world, wisdom, joy and opening the gate of acceptance. Then it was all over. Abts, the winner, has shunned publicity, and she did not use the opportunity of an acceptance speech to say anything more than thank you. Some journo said it was hard work to get her to say anything newsworthy in the press conference afterwards.
I am often asked what effect winning the Turner had on my career as an artist. My stock reply is: “Not as much as you think it might.” It takes more than a prize to guarantee stardom in the art world, in which the top echelon have attained their status after years of filtering through the nods and murmurs of accreditation by those who have clout. Having said this, the Turner is very respected within the art world: at 23 it is the oldest art prize and has a very good track record of featuring artists who prove to have enduring quality.
On the evening I won, after the photo-op and a grilling from the media, there was a curious lull. I remember standing in the eye of the storm under the octagon in the Duveen galleries all alone for what felt like ten minutes while my life reconfigured to take on my new quadruple-barrelled identity Grayson Perry-Turner-Prize-Winner. At that precise moment the art critic Louisa Buck was sitting in a lecture among dealers and collectors at the Miami Basel Art fair. On the stroke of 4pm their time, she said, mobile phones went off all round the room with the news of my win, to be met with whoops or groans.
Back in 2006, an increasingly sozzled post mortem began. Some cynics thought Abts’s win was a political decision because she was a woman and others thought it was about time a painter won again. Someone else suggested that a lot of serious gallery directors and curators were itching for the return of abstraction. Unsurprisingly Matthew Higgs, one of the judges, said it was purely about the quality of the work and it was an easy debate, with Abts being unanimous choice for winner. I think Abts is a great choice, for it reflects the mature status of the prize that a quiet, thoughtful artist can win with her small, unflashy paintings.
At this point I had to pop to the cloakroom to retrieve my bicycle pump as my inflatable collar had lost a bit of its pep.
