Credit: RAFTS, 2022, HD Video (1:06:55), Serpentine Gallery. Photo by George Darrell. Courtesy andriesse-eyck galerie.

Credit: Rory Pilgrim, RAFTS, Production Still, 2021. Photo by Matthew Ritson.

Meet the Turner Prize artist shortlist: Rory Pilgrim

As Education Partner for the Turner Prize 2023, the world’s leading prize for contemporary art, we will be taking a deep dive into the artist shortlist announced in April of this year. We invite you to join us over the following weeks and meet each of the artists. 

Did you know, two University of Sussex alumni have previously won the Turner Prize. Mixed-media artist Helen Cammock, a Sussex sociology graduate, was one of the co-winners of the 2019 prize. And conceptual artist, Jeremy Deller, who holds a British Art History and Critical Theory MA from Sussex, won the Turner Prize in 2004. 

The shortlisted artists for this year’s Turner Prize 2023 are; Jesse Darling, Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim and Barbara Walker. This week we are shining a spotlight on Rory Pilgrim. 

Meet Rory Pilgrim

Rory Pilgrim was born in 1988 in Bristol. Pilgrim earned a BA in Fine Art at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, London in 2008, and completed a two-year programme at De Ateliers, Amsterdam in 2010.

Pilgrim is a multidisciplinary artist working across a wide range of media including song writing, composition, films, texts, drawings, paintings and live performances. Centred on emancipatory concerns, Pilgrim aims to challenge the nature of how we come together, speak, listen and strive for social change through sharing and voicing personal experience. Strongly influenced by the origins of activist, feminist and socially engaged art, Pilgrim works with others through methods of dialogue, collaboration and workshops.  

Pilgrim was nominated for the commission RAFTS at Serpentine and Barking Town Hall, and a live performance of the work at Cadogan Hall, London. Pilgrim developed RAFTS as the second chapter in a body of work exploring how the climate crisis relates to support structures in our everyday lives. Made during the Covid-19 pandemic, Pilgrim positions the raft as a symbol of support keeping us afloat in challenging and precarious circumstances. The resulting film is a seven-song oratorio, narrated by eight residents of Barking and Dagenham from Green Shoes Arts reflecting on what the symbol of a raft means to them through song, music, dance and poetry.  

Be part of this year’s Turner Prize 

Visit the exhibition featuring the shortlisted artists at the gallery, Towner Eastbourne, just a short trip along the coast - opens 28 September 2023. The winner will be announced on December 5 2023 at an award ceremony in Eastbourne’s Winter Gardens.

Teams from across the university have also been collaborating with Towner Eastbourne on an inspiring arts education programme. This will include events on campus at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA), more information coming soon!