Turner Prize nominee Jasleen Kaur's art makes you think – Scotsman comment

The Turner Prize can sometimes leave many of us scratching our heads, but that’s no bad thing

Of all the art prizes, the Turner is, without doubt, the most playful, provocative and controversial. Every year it seems to throw up something that people who ‘don’t know much about art but know what they like’ get rather exercised about.

Famously Tracey Emin’s unmade bed was shortlisted for the prize and later sold at auction for more than £2.5 million (how much?!). Martin Creed’s “Work No. 227: The lights going on and off” was another that baffled many (including, possibly, some at The Scotsman).

Now Glasgow-born Jasleen Kaur has been nominated for a work which features a vintage Ford Escort covered with an outsized ornamental doily. It makes an arresting, slightly comical image, that’s perhaps puzzling at first. But Judge Rosie Cooper explained Kaur saw the vehicle as a “representation of her dad's first car and his migrant desires”, adding that it had “blasted snippets of uplifting pop songs referencing freedom and liberation throughout the [exhibition] space”.

Sometimes art is hard to understand, but if it makes us think, even if we draw a blank in the search for meaning, it’s done its job.

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