Turner Prize 2026 exhibition opens in Middlesborough: See work by artists shortlisted for this year’s award

The free exhibition Turner Prize 2026 – featuring the work of Simeon Barclay, Kira Freije, Marguerite Humeau and Tanoa Sasraku – will be on show at the MIMA gallery in the heart of Middlesborough until March 29th.

What to expect

Simeon Barclay creates environments where objects, architecture, sounds, video and images collide to create a deeply personal and often humorous portrait of British culture. He is nominated for his performance The Ruin, commissioned by the Roberts Institute of Art and presented at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire and New Art Exchange, Nottingham.

For his presentation of The Ruin at MIMA – an international art gallery and museum which is part of Teesside University – Barclay has made material the energy of the live performance through a spatial intervention, resonating with his own voice. It invites the audience on a journey back in time to when the M62 motorway was being carved through the Pennines; one of the most significant infrastructural projects of postwar Britain.

The work speaks to the ambition of the planners and the freedom that the project offered, particularly to the residents of Huddersfield and its surroundings, where the artist spent his youth.

Kira Freije creates sculptural worlds inhabited by human and animal forms. She is nominated for her solo exhibition Unspeak the Chorus at The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, co-commissioned with Modern Art Oxford.

In Freije’s Turner Prize exhibition, groups of figures occupy the gallery space. Their open structures are built from slender welded steel strips, creating volumes or forms that resemble drawings in space, with faces, hands and feet cast in aluminium. Walls of scattered points of light suggest a night sky, reflected from mirrored walls across the sculptures. A gentle mist gives the light structure and is treated by Freije as another material within the installation. Found textiles, glass and salvaged materials appear throughout.

Marguerite Humeau’s practice brings together sculpture, sound and light, moving between two prehistoric pasts, the present and imagined futures to explore life, death, transformation and survival. She is nominated for her solo exhibition Torches at ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishøj, Denmark and Helsinki Art Museum (HAM).

In Humeau’s exhibition at MIMA, beings emerge as guides and companions under a celestial sky of translucent glass orbs. A monumental elephant matriarch approaches death and guardians protect precious substances. Across the exhibition, death is not an ending but a moment of renewal. Working with zoologists, anthropologists, foragers, clairvoyants and others, she brings together different forms of knowledge to consider new ways of thinking about our place within the history of life in the universe. Soft white flooring creates a shared landscape for Humeau’s sculptural beings. As visitors move across it, their footsteps leave traces and gradually change the space, reminding us that we too are part of a much larger, interconnected living world.

Tanoa Sasraku explores materials and their narrative potential through the prism of human power structures. Her artworks make connections between seemingly distinct material processes, found objects and familiar symbols, inviting the viewer to be curious about where they came from, who they belong to and how they were made. She is nominated for her solo exhibition Morale Patch at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London.

For her Turner Prize exhibition, Sasraku investigates the dynamics, instruments and aesthetics of power that facilitate “extractivism” – the aggressive, large-scale removal of natural resources for profit. Materials and objects in the exhibition include raw pigment found in the earth in Cornwall and Ghana, used to saturate a paper suit pattern; liquid crude oil contained inside highly processed, petrochemically derived acrylic paperweights; and stacks of bleached stripes on brittle sheets of paper held together with binder clips, each titled with the battles for which they faintly signify.

Tate Britain Director Alex Farquharson said: “Tate Britain frequently works with museums and galleries across the UK to bring the Turner Prize to the widest possible audience, and I am delighted that this year’s presentation is hosted by MIMA in Middlesbrough. The Turner Prize has always been a catalyst for conversation and debate, and MIMA’s deep engagement with its local community makes it a wonderful setting for this year’s exhibition.”

Director of MIMA and Dean of Culture & Creativity at Teesside University Dr Laura Sillars said: “Artists have a unique capacity to invite us to look again at the world around us and to ask: what if? Bringing Turner Prize 2026 to MIMA creates a meeting between four exceptional artistic practices and the histories, experiences and imaginations of Middlesbrough, Teesside and the North East.”

One of the best-known prizes for the visual arts in the world, the Turner Prize aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art – awarding £25,000 to the winner and £10,000 to the other shortlisted artists.

MIMA is home to The Middlesbrough Collection of over 2,350 artworks and is dedicated to innovative research and artistic excellence, working in collaboration with communities and partners across the Tees Valley, nationally and globally.

Book your free visit

Entry to MIMA and Turner Prize 2026 is free, although booking is required.

To book your visit or find out more visit: www./mima.art/exhibition/mima-will-host-the-2026-turner-prize