Breaking: Preston artist shortlisted for prestigious Turner Prize

A Preston artist has been shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize.

One of Britain’s leading black female artists, Lubaina Himid MBE, has become the oldest person to be nominated for British art’s most high-profile award.

The Preston-based 62-year-old is eligible for the £25,000 Turner Prize after the award abolished its ban on over-50s.

The professor of contemporary art at the University of Central Lancashire made her name in the 1980s as one of the leaders of the British black arts movement – both painting and curating exhibitions of similarly overlooked black female artists.

Born in Zanzibar, Tanzania, Lubaina was given on MBE in 2010.

She’s nominated for solo shows in Bristol and Oxford. The Bristol show centred on larger-than-life cut-outs of 100 colourful figures – 17th Century African slave servants brought to Europe. Another work, Cotton.com, imagined conversations between the cotton workers of Lancashire and the slaves of South Carolina.

The Turner Prize judges praised her for ‘addressing pertinent questions of personal and political identity’.

The winner will be announced at the Feren’s gallery in Hull on December 5.