The Bogside Artists unveil their Anti-Turner 'Piece"

DERRY, Northern Ireland - Dec. 2, 2013 - PRLog -- The Bogside Artists of Derry who are widely known around the world for their series of murals on The Troubles in Northern Ireland called The People's Gallery have made a visual statement against the Turner Prize.

Yesterday, on the eve of the announcement of the Turner Prize winner, they put on public display a massive image giving visual force to their view.  The image is on a wall in a very prominent place opposite William Street where The People's Gallery is situated. The famous gallery, a suite of twelve large-scale murals depicting the troubles, has been targeted by the status quo as it strives to bury its past from out of sight. The gallery ironically is the biggest tour draw in the city that its bitterest opponents exploit via tourism while simultaneously disparaging and belittling the work of the artists who created them to thousands of people who visit the city each year to see them.

The artists released the following statement. "The Turner Prize is championed by the British media as "one of the most prestigious awards for visual arts in Europe" (Telegraph). We, like a great many others, hold it in no such regard. We see it as just another tool in the mould of outfits like Common Purpose for establishing and maintaining the oligarchic rule of power elites over our lives. Frankly, we should have more respect for our God-Given creative powers. The Turner is about conferring exchange value on conformist artists and their work and promoting British art stock at home and especially abroad. End of story. As such it is morally and spiritually redundant. That is how and why successful nominees and winners end up propping up the British Art Establishment with one eye on a possible knighthood or damehood and another on the gratuitous promotion of their work by their patrons. The Turner is cleverly promoted as a respectable institution, but then so are banks and financial groups, all dedicated to fleecing their fellow man. We hold that The Turner competition should be accorded no more respect than a Christmas cracker. Our mural that we unveiled yesterday (1st December) one day before the announcement of the winner is our response to the Turner Prize. We stand firmly with the Stuckists when it comes to protecting art from financial marauders claiming to act in the public's interest. People everywhere should know that there is a hidden oligarchy at large in our culture dictating what is art and what isn't and enforcing their will in that regard without license or moral accountability with a view to nothing more or less than the world art market.They are on a par with the group that has been empowered by who knows who? to set the gold standard.  It has reached the stage now where if these curators and critics do not mention you then your work is deemed to be without merit. Thus, many thousands of artists are intimidated and often confused about the innate qualities of their own creations and work isolated in the hope that one of these sods may one day deliver them from the undeserved purgatory of anonymity they have been afflicted with regardless of how much talent they may have. The Turner Prize and its committee are the clear manifest of this type of unconscionable tyranny."