Simeon Barclay shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2026

Workplace is delighted to announce that Simeon Barclay has been shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2026.

Barclay is nominated for ‘The Ruin’, performed at ICA, London and The Hepworth, Wakefield in 2025. Commissioned and first presented by the Roberts Institute of Art, The Ruin is Barclay’s first live performance, bringing together spoken word and percussion by James Larter and horn by Isaac Shieh. The Turner Prize will be hosted at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA) in Autumn 2026.

Simeon Barclay was born in Huddersfield, UK in 1975 and lives and works in West Yorkshire. He completed his BA at Leeds Metropolitan University in 2010 and his MFA at Goldsmiths College, London in 2014.

Barclay’s work draws on popular culture, bringing together contemporary and historical references from television, comics, theatre, modernist art, literature, sport and film. He reshapes and collides these references, often with humour, to explore the complex and contradictory narratives that shape the modern British experience, including ideas of memory, class, inheritance and masculinity.

‘The Ruin’ reflects on Britishness through the lens of Barclay’s upbringing in 1980s Huddersfield as the son of Caribbean parents. The soundscape combines early modern music, pop culture references and industrial sounds connected to Barclay’s youth and personal history. These sounds are layered with visual elements including lighting, fog and monochrome costumes worn by the performers, evoking the industrial landscapes of Northern England in ‘80s and ‘90s Britain. The piece is a dynamic and theatrical meditation on self-image, memory and the evolving myth of Britain.