Turner Prize 2022: Trafalgar Square whipped cream artist among nominees

The artist who put a giant whipped cream sculpture on the Fourth Plinth in London's Trafalgar Square is among the nominees for this year's Turner Prize.

Heather Phillipson is shortlisted for the annual art award alongside Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan and Sin Wai Kin.

Jury co-chair Helen Legg described them as "urgent and distinctive voices".

An exhibition of the four artists' work will open at Tate Liverpool in October, with the winner to be announced at an award ceremony in the city in December.

Noting the effect of lockdown on artists, Tate Liverpool director Legg added: "It feels like a delayed Turner Prize, but also one that's a real celebration of galleries reopening and the opportunity for visitors to get back into galleries, and to start to re-engage with works of art."

The winner will be awarded £25,000, with £10,000 going to each of the nominees.

Heather Phillipson, an award-winning poet as well as a visual artist, is nominated for both her Fourth Plinth - the dollop of cream topped with a cherry, a fly and a drone - and her recent solo exhibition at Tate Britain.

The Tate show was populated by huge mutant metal and papier-mâché creatures, and filled with colour and sound in an attempt to, as she put it, "cultivate strangeness, and its potential to generate ecstatic experience".

The Turner judges said she "splices absurdity, tragedy and imagination to probe urgent and complex ideas".

Best known as a photographer, Ingrid Pollard, who moved to Britain from Guyana with her family as a child, is nominated for her retrospective titled Carbon Slowly Turning at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes.

She made her name with photos that captured black figures in the English landscape in the 1980s, raising questions about race and belonging in the countryside. She also uses sculpture, film, collage and sound.

The judges praised her work, which they said "for decades has uncovered stories and histories hidden in plain sight". At 69, she would be the oldest Turner Prize winner.

Veronica Ryan's sculptures evoke fruits, seeds, plants and vegetables, and other objects from her home island of Montserrat.

She has a particular interest in the Caribbean island's pre-colonial culture, and her 2021 exhibition Along a Spectrum examined "environmental and socio-political concerns, personal narratives, history and displacement", according to Bristol's Spike Island gallery.

The nomination also recognised the outdoor sculptures she created in Hackney, east London, for the UK's first permanent artwork to honour the Windrush generation. The Turner judges said they were "struck by the exquisite sensuality and tactility" of her work.

Toronto-born, London-based Sin Wai Kin is nominated for contributions to the British Art Show 9 and Frieze London. A drag performer and non-binary, their work was described by the British Art Show as bringing "fantasy to life through storytelling via moving image, performance, writing, sound and print".

In the film that was on display, characters moved through a dreamscape, waking up from each consecutive dream and unsure about where reality lies.

The Turner jury said they were impressed by the "boundary-pushing nature of Sin's work, and how they deftly translated the visceral quality of their live performances into film".

Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain and co-chair of the Turner Prize jury, said this year's shortlist was "excitingly rich and varied".

"Art has provided much-needed enjoyment and escape over the past year, but it has also helped to reconnect us with each other and the world around us, as the practices of the four shortlisted artists variously exemplify," he said.

"I congratulate all four artists on their brilliant contributions and can't wait to see their exhibition at Tate Liverpool."

The Turner Prize is returning to Liverpool for the first time in 15 years. In 2007, the venue became the first place outside London to present the prize, before it went to other cities including Newcastle, Hull and Margate.

Liverpool Mayor Joanne Anderson previously said the event would "shine a global spotlight" on the city.

The Turner Prize, established in 1984, is the most high-profile award in contemporary British art.