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UCL alumna on Turner Prize shortlist

8 May 2007

Former UCL student Zarina Bhimji (UCL Slade School of Fine Art 1989) is one of the four shortlisted artists for the 2007 Turner Prize.

Zarina left Uganda for Leicester with her family at the age of 11, when dictator Idi Amin ordered all Ugandan Asians to leave the country.

Having also created films and installations, Zarina is an important international artist whose thought-provoking images and artworks have been shown in museums worldwide. She is nominated for a series of large format photographs from Uganda taken between 1998 and 2006, which were first shown at the Haunch of Venison galleries in Zurich and London. Turner Prize judges described the images as "powerful, atmospheric and poignant".

The Turner Prize was established in 1984 by the Tate Gallery's Patrons of New Art and has since become the UK's most highly publicised art accolade. The annual prize of £30,000 is awarded to a visual artist under 50 years old and is intended to promote public discussion of new developments in contemporary British art.

Zarina is nominated alongside Mark Wallinger, whose anti-war protest installation is on show at Tate Britain, Nathan Coley, who creates striped cardboard models of religious buildings and Mike Nelson, an installation artist who lost out on the Turner Prize in 2001 to Martin Creed (UCL Slade School of Fine Art 1990).

Image: 'Your Sadness is Drunk' 2001-2006 © Zarina Bhimji.
DACS, London 2007. Courtesy Haunch of Venison


 Links: 

Zarina Bhimji

UCL Slade School of Fine Art

The Turner Prize