The Turner Prize 2011

It’s old news to say that the Turner Prize causes scandal, and since 2008's notoriously 'safe' show it’s even become old news to say that it doesn’t. In its hedonistic heyday, the Turner Prize organisers had to do little to engage their public – the provocative pieces did all the hard work for them. Even when it took an austere turn, the media again descended upon the prize for being...scandal-less. So what does this year’s prize have to offer, if not scandal or a lack thereof?

Firstly, there is a change of venue, with the prize moving for the first time in its 27 years beyond the Tate franchise, to the Baltic in Newcastle. The difference is instantly notable. With no less than four friendly and attentive staff at the entrance, it seems the Baltic are going all out in their efforts to engage the queue of Turner Prize pilgrims. Are they trying to re-adress the balance of the prize's typically one-sided and media-driven dialogue? Or are they just extra nice to reviewers? Optimistically, I opt for the former. But does this new hospitable Turner Prize belie fears of public indifference in the absence of outrageous newspaper headlines?

Apparently not. The (very attentive) staff assure me that this is not the case - it merely reflects long-standing Baltic policy. This operates, I am told, with the aim to increase staff numbers and their knowledge in order to kindly navigate lost souls through the jargon-heavy wall descriptions. Compared to my experience of previous Turner Prizes, this policy, if not shifting a paradigm, is at least giving it a solid nudge.

Unfortunately, the nominees seemed content to leave any nearby paradigms comfortably in situ. Martin Boyce’s room contains a high canopy of white metal geometric shapes. The geometry is reflected, this time in warmer tones, through matching shaped leaf-fall scattered across the floor. The room also holds a few artfully carved air vents, a bin, and a table with only half its top, surmounted by a Calder-esque mobile; all of which are softly lit underneath the canopy’s dappled shade. It sounds a disparate collection, but everything is unified by an adherence to the same polygonal forms that govern the canopy’s construction.

Whereas Boyce creates a warm environment, Hilary Lloyd’s room is mercilessly cold and technological. Chrome steel pillars hang from the roof and project from the floor like industrial stalagmites and stalactites. Supported on these are both screens and projectors; each displaying videos of banal objects (floors, council high rises etc), swerving and fading in and out of view at various speeds. My reaction ranged from disinterest to mild motion sickness.

Placing Karla Black’s room after Lloyd’s is definitely the stand-out curatorial decision of the show. The lurch from Lloyd’s minimal-techno-cave into Black’s infantile hallucinatory baroque is really something. Black’s room is surreal and seductive. As much as her text repeats the impotent ‘thinking without words’ fallacies of the abstract expressionists, the works remain likeable. Her use of materials such as make-up, powder, soap and plastic – all in pastel shades - is undeniably the most innovative out of the four contestants.

George Shaw’s use of materials – in this case Humbrol enamel paint typically reserved for model making – is also innovative, to a point. By painting small scenes of suburban nowhere for most of his career, Shaw exhibits an anti-high-art innovation of sorts. But like the size of his paintings and their subject matter, these innovations are too modest, too self-effacing and accordingly, too dreary.

As people whipped through the four nominee’s rooms I wondered why, despite the clearly capable staff, such little time was spent studying the works. At this point an uncomfortable realisation emerged: that at the moment an institution appeared to start making a concerted effort to communicate contemporary art to the masses, contemporary art got quite boring.

‘Quite’ is the vital word here. If it was just ‘boring’, or even 'really really boring' this year’s Turner Prize might, paradoxically, have been more interesting. It would have been of note for taking its recent leanings toward ‘credibility’ to new, playing-it-safe lows. It would have inspired debate and public engagement. But it hasn’t. Through a quite mediocre selection, the Turner Prize has missed a vital opportunity to imprint contemporary art onto the public's mind, not just in their newspapers.