The oldest artist ever to win the prize talks approximately turning Guardian pages into art,being forced out of London, and how she’ll be spending the prize money on funding her friends – and buying really fancy shoesThe Guardian headline mashupsLubaina Himid is lustrous-eyed and ferociously on the ball the morning after winning the Turner prize. Perhaps one advantage of being the oldest-ever winner, or as the headlines baldly put it (she is 63),is the ability to get the award with immense, mature poise. As the £25000 cheque was presented in Hull Minster on Tuesday evening, and the Preston-based artist thanked,among others, the art historians who had supported her work “during the wilderness years”; my mother, and for letting me do what I wanted as long as I came domestic by 10pm”; and “all the people who stopped in the streets of Preston and Hull to wish me luck – it worked”.
Still,she tells me as we talk in the Ferens Gallery, where the Turner-prize exhibition has already received 90000 visitors as share of Hull’s year as UK city of culture, and her victory is “bittersweet. I think to myself what I could have done whether I’d won it at 40. That would have been good. But I guess there are more things I’ve got to say now,and it gives me a good opportunity to say them. But there aren’t that many years left. Twenty years in front of you is not the same as 63 years behind you.” Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk