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Agence France-Presse

The redevelopment of a street in a rundown district of Liverpool has won the Turner Prize, blurring the lines between art and design.
Even the winners, the architectural collective Assemble, expressed shock at having won one of the world’s most prestigious art prizes on Monday.
The London-based group is redeveloping 10 Victorian houses in Liverpool’s Toxteth district.
“I think it’s safe to say this nomination was a surprise to all of us, and the last six months has been a kind of super surreal experience,” said Assemble member Joseph Halligan at the awards ceremony in the Scottish city of Glasgow.

“It’s allowed us this amazing opportunity to start something, Granby Workshop, which we really hope will live on for a very, very, very long time. We’re really really grateful. Thank you.”
Their work focused on the Granby Four Streets cluster of houses in Toxteth, which fell into disrepair after tensions between the black community and police erupted into riots in 1981.
Assemble worked with local residents to redevelop the area and have set up a workshop there so that young people can learn to make fittings and fixtures, including chimneys and door handles.
Never before had a group so large been nominated for the Turner Prize, let alone won it - Assemble has 18 founder members, most aged in their 20s.
The group started as friends at the prestigious University of Cambridge.
Their win is even more surprising given their work is rooted in architecture, not a traditional artistic category.
The £25,000 (35,000 euro) contemporary art prize, which is named after painter William Turner, has been awarded annually since 1984 to an artist aged under 50 who is living in, or was born in, Britain.
The award is closely followed as a marker for art world trends, but is also frequently mocked by critics of the contemporary art scene.
Previous winning works have included a room in which lights are turned on and off intermittently, and Damien Hirst’s bisected cow and calf preserved in formaldehyde.
An unmade bed strewn with rubbish by artist Tracey Emin was a runner up in 1999.
Once the vibrant heart of the Liverpool’s black community, “after the [1981] riots, the area was closed down,” explained Erika Rushton, Chair of the Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust (CLT).
With clubs and shops closing down, tenants being evicted and homeowners fleeing the area, its traditional Victorian houses were mostly demolished, to be replaced by ugly and discordant social housing.
The last four blocks of terraced houses were saved in the 1990s thanks to a few dozen owners who refused to leave. But all successive renovation projects failed and three quarters of the 200 remaining houses were empty for over 20 years.
“In 2010-2011 the last of those schemes collapsed,” said Theresa McDermott, resident and manager of the local market with husband Joe.
“So we thought ‘what about a plan that says this is not about one big solution for the area, it’s about lots of little solutions’.”
A handful of residents began “guerrilla gardening”, planting flowers in any spare patch of land. They then painted the windows and doors of abandoned houses and launched a monthly street market.
“That made us feel better but it also changed people perceptions,” said McDermott, adding it was “the main reason why the council and investors started listening to us.
“It made us seem much more resilient as a community.”
As part of the CLT, the council agreed to hand over ownership of the ten houses involved in the project.
The CLT caught the eye of architectural firm Steinbeck Studios, whose founder Xanthe Hamilton was looking for a project on behalf of an investor.
The backer, who wishes to remain anonymous, “said ’if residents invest their time and energy, I will invest my money’,” explained Rushton.
“Instead of seeing people as an obstacle to regeneration, he saw them as an asset.”
Steinbeck Studios also put the CLT in contact with Assemble.
“Instead of coming with their own plans, they listened, they put our vision into words and pictures,” said Rushton.
“For example, they saw the planting as an ultimate priority that must be retained.”
“It was really good having a meeting of minds because we already had our vision quite firmly in place about not just getting the houses renovated but keeping the community and trying to get people back,” added McDermott.
Thanks to the investor's interest-free £500,000 loan, the CLT was able to raise a further £500,000 and begin renovating the 10 houses, of which five are nearing completion.
Others were soon attracted by the area's dynamism, including local social housing groups. Two of the four streets are now full of scaffolding and swarming with workmen.
“It will be the best place to live in the city, I'm convinced of it,” said Ann O'Byrne, deputy mayor of Liverpool.
Assemble set up a workshop in the area so that young people can learn to make fittings and fixtures, including chimneys and door handles for the redeveloped homes.
“They are very aware that though it's they who have been nominated for the prize, the efforts of a lot of people have made this happen,” said Rushton.
“It's not their story, it's everybody's story.”
Other Turner finalists this year included London-based German artist Nicole Wermers, with her room of modern chairs with fur coats sewn onto them, and a supernatural study centre by British artist Bonnie Camplin.
Her work consisted of a room containing five televisions with headphones, where visitors can listen to people explaining supernatural events they claim to have experienced.
The fourth finalist featured the enigmatic work of 45-year-old Canadian artist Janice Kerbel.
The musical composition, “DOUG”, is performed by six opera singers dressed in black who sing songs recounting a series of disasters that happened to a person named Doug.


This street in Liverpool is officially an important work of art, winner of  the prestigious Turner Prize

Cairns Street in Toxteth, Liverpool. Assemble, a London-based collective of architects, designers and artists aged 30 and under, have been nominated for a Turner Prize for their work improving four streets, including Cairns St, in the Granby Four Streets area. Houses in Toxteth have recently been sold off for £1 by the council.

The Assemble, winners of the Turner Prize celebrate at The Tramway in Glasgow, Scotland, December 7, 2015. The Assemble architectural and design collective that helped renovate a rundown area of Liverpool to try to stem the tide of gentrification won Britain's Turner Prize for contemporary art on Monday. The prize, established in 1984 and run in partnership with the Tate museums, carries a 25,000-pound ($37,660) cash award. In the past, it has gone mostly to visual and conceptual artists such as Anthony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Damien Hirst. REUTERS/Russell Cheyne

(FILES) -- A file photo taken on September 30, 2015, shows a visitor looks through "A Showroom for Granby Workshop" by artist collective "Assemble" during a photo call for the 2015 Turner Prize short list nominations announcement at The Tramway art space in Glasgow, Scotland. Architectural collective Assemble has won the 2015 Turner Prize for contemporary visual art, the competition's organisers said on December 7, 2015. AFP PHOTO / ANDY BUCHANAN RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE, MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION, TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION

(FILES) -- A file photo taken on July 3, 2015, shows builders as they take a break outside one of the houses designed by "Assemble," which have been nominated for the 2015 Turner Prize, in Cairns Street, part of the Granby Four Streets area in Liverpool, north west England.In Liverpool's Granby neighborhood, proud residents and a group of architects have brought back to life the area's four remaining Victorian streets, earning them a nomination for Britain's prestigious Turner Prize for contemporary art. Architectural collective Assemble has won the 2015 Turner Prize for contemporary visual art, the competition's organisers said on December 7, 2015. AFP PHOTO / PAUL ELLIS

Cairns Street in Toxteth, Liverpool, part of the Turner Prize winning redevelopment project by the architectural collective Assemble. Photo: The Guardian

The architecture collective Assemble, at work in Toxteth. Photo: Assemble

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