At last the Turner prize gets it. Artists improve with age
Martha Gill, The Observer
December 2022
At 66, Veronica Ryan has become the oldest ever winner of the Turner prize. Heartening news – and not just for fans of Ryan, the sculptor who created the first permanent public artwork commemorating the Windrush generation.
There is something universally cheery and comforting about the phrase “oldest ever winner” – designed to put a glint in the middle-aged eye and send lapsed artists everywhere rifling through drawers for their box of watercolours. (Could they still have a chance?) It is quite different, for example, from the dreadful phrase “youngest ever winner”, designed only to panic contemporaries, wind up their parents, and send everyone else into despair. […]