'Good for them!' – subverting the Turner prize is what artists are meant to do

Losers have sulked and even attacked people with gladioli. But the four shortlisted artists’ decision to share this year’s winnings could be the upset to end them all

• Turner prize awarded fourways after artists’ plea to judges

Personally, I’m happy that the four artists shortlisted for this year’s Turner prize decided to ask the judges to view them as a collective and not pick a winner. Subverting the game is something artists are supposed to do. If it had been the judges who had been unable to award the prize, I would have been a lot less sanguine. But it is another thing entirely for an artist on the shortlist to split the prize – as Helen Marten did in 2016, sharing her winnings for both the Turner and that year’s Hepworth prize with fellow nominees. She was following the lead of Theaster Gates, who divided the £40,000 Artes Mundi prize among his fellow shortlisted artists in 2015. “Let’s split this motherfucker,” he announced live on TV from the podium in Cardiff.

The Turner has always been premised on there being a winner. The award garners publicity, feeds the bookies and, apparently, generates discussion. It is all, supposedly, good for the climate in which contemporary art gets talked about. But artists whose works and attitudes have nothing to do with one another are often pitted against one another for no good reason.