When a collective called Assemble won the 2015 Turner prize on Monday, they became the first “non-artists” to scoop the UK’s most prestigious art prize.
The architecture and design project was the first of its kind to have been nominated for the Turner prize since its creation three decades ago and, in winning, has become the 10th art form to have done so.
The prize, which takes its name from the English painter JMW Turner, is granted every year to a British artist under the age of 50 by a panel of judges.
In 1984 Malcolm Morley became the inaugural winner, making painting the first discipline to be awarded the prize. Since then nine more art forms have received this honour: sculpture, film, photography, photomontage, print, pottery, audio and installations art, and since Monday, architecture.
Among the most commonly awarded disciplines is sculpture, which has won the award seven times in a row between 1987 and 1994 (the prize was cancelled in 1990 due to lack of sponsorship).
Following this period of dominance, other art forms came to the fore, with a shift towards video and film, a discipline that has won in its own right on five separate occasions and has formed part of winning art installations on three occasions since 1996.
Other installations, including the 2001 prizewinner, Damien Hirst’s Mother and Child Divided, have won the prize on six separate occasions, while a sound installation by artist Susan Phillipsz singing three versions of a Scottish lament took the prize in 2010.
Assemble received their £25,000 prize from the artist Kim Gordon at the Tramway in Glasgow on Monday. Other nominees this year included Bonnie Camplin and Nicole Wermers for their installation art and Janice Kerbel for her work for singers, Doug.
