Laure Prouvost who won the distinguished Turner Prize this year is set to showcase her award winning work ‘Wantee’ in the Cumbrian village, where it was devised and executed. Prouvost spent a period of months in Coniston, involving local artists and the Coniston Youth Club who helped to build the set for the film.
The installation was created in Coniston after being titled in homage to Schwitters’s companion Edith Thomas, who was given the nickname after repeatedly asking, “Want tea? Schwitters was a German artist and avant garde thinker who fled the Nazis and lived in the area in the 1940s. One of his most important works is located in the area.
The Prouvost installation comprised of a film about her fictional grandfather, who is portrayed to be a conceptual artist and friend of Schwitters. The film is shown in a room set up like a tea party where visitors watch Prouvost’s film about a grandfather who digs his way out of his home.
Alistair Hudson, deputy director of Grizedale Arts: “We are so pleased Laure has won the Turner Prize with this project. In many ways she was an outside bet, but in the end it seems the jury were won over by this strange, moving and funny and accessible piece of story telling.
Speaking at the Turner Prize awards ceremony, Prouvost said: “I’m not ready, I didn’t expect it at all. “I thought ‘It can’t be me,’ – I was sure it was not me.”
The work will move from the Turner Prize exhibition in Londonderry to the Ruskin Museum in Coniston on 24 January.