Cachella Smith
Live reporter

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This evening, Nnena Kalu has made history - as the first artist with a learning disability to win the Turner Prize.

The judges called her work "bold and captivating" with pieces that feature swirling drawings and hanging sculptures made with materials such as VHS tape and rope.

Kalu creates "gorgeous complex forms", her artistic director told the audience gathered in Bradford, all the while listening to disco music (apparently very loudly).

"This amazing lady has worked so hard for such a long time," Charlotte Hollinshead added.

Our culture editor, Katie Razzall, says this moment could open doors to others, and jury chairman Alex Farquharson agreed it is "historic" as he emphasised the winner was selected on merit.

We will be ending our live coverage shortly but there's more in our news story.

Tinshui Yeung
Live reporter

Image source, David Levene

As a viewer, there are plenty of ways to get stuck into a piece of art.

You can simply look at it, sure - but the real fun comes when you start imagining how the artist actually made it. That, for me, is the best way to experience Nnena Kalu’s winning piece.

Her enormous sculpture - mostly created by wrapping materials like tape to make “cocoons” - is the product of some seriously physical, repetitive graft.

It’s all about that repeated movement - up and down, both arms stretching, making circles - as the artist negotiates her relationship with the space around her.

And the rhythm, which many critics have picked out as a key element, is all about that sound: the roll of tape in your hand, then pull, wrap, pull, wrap.

It’s almost hypnotic, and that’s what gives the artwork its poetry - it has a knack for capturing the hearts of many.

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Nnena Kalu was born to Nigerian parents in Glasgow in 1966, but the family later moved to Wandsworth in London - where Kalu is still based.

Kalu is best known for her large sculptural pieces, which create cocoon-like shapes using materials such as fabric, paper and video tape.

Since 2016, she has shown her work alongside a range of contemporary artists - including Laure Prouvost, who won the Turner Prize in 2013. Kalu also took part in the contemporary art festival Glasgow International in 2018.

Earlier this year, Kalu held her first solo show outside the UK, at Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway.

Kalu is a learning-disabled artist with limited verbal communication, and has been a resident artist with ActionSpace, which supports artists with learning disabilities, for more than 25 years.

Ian Youngs
Culture reporter

Kalu's work has divided opinion among art critics, but she is "absolutely" a deserving winner, the Yorkshire Post's arts reporter Yvette Huddleston says.

She tells BBC Radio 4's Front Row: "Going into that [exhibition] room, you have such an interesting emotional response because you have these beautiful, very joyful, colourful hanging sculptures, and then these slightly sinister large-scale drawings, which make you think about possibly being watched."

The sculptures "feel like friendly creatures", Huddleston says.

"Especially at the moment, I think we need a bit of joy and a bit of uplift, and I think that's what that work does."

Ian Youngs
Culture reporter

Image source, EPA

The Turner Prize judges were impressed by the "really compelling sculptures and drawings that could only be made by Nnena", according to the jury chairman, Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson.

Her drawings, which come in sets of two or three near-identical shapes, have "a beautiful intricacy to them" and "look like swirling vortexes", he says.

Her sculptures, meanwhile, are hanging shapes covered in reams of repurposed materials including fabric, rope, parcel tape, cling film and paper.

They resemble three-dimensional versions of abstract expressionist paintings, Farquharson adds. "But they're not paintings, they're not flat on the wall. They're suspended in the space that you're in, like brightly coloured rocks or creatures.

"They're at almost your eye level. Although there are no figurative features at all, they appear to be communing among themselves and with you.

"The use of materials is highly unusual, including video tape that gets wrapped round and round.

"The colours and the lines the materials make are very like brush marks translated into three dimensions. They're very gestural, they're very expressive, they're very compelling."

Ian Youngs
Culture reporter

The judges deliberated for two or three hours earlier today, according to jury chairman Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, and he stresses that their choice of winner was based purely on merit.

"The result wasn't about wanting, first and foremost, to give the prize to Nnena as the first neurodiverse artist. That wasn't a driving factor," he says.

"It was interest in, and a real belief in, the quality and uniqueness of her practice, which is inseparable from who she is."

It is a historic moment, though, he tells BBC News.

"It breaks down walls between, if you like, neurotypical and neurodiverse artists. It becomes really about the power and quality of the work itself, whatever the artist's identity is.

"So maybe what's historic about it is it's one more move to include really great neurodiverse artists in the picture we present of art today."

Katie Razzall
Culture editor

Nnena Kalu has an innate need to create art.

She’s compelled to be an artist - and her work is all the more compelling for that. She creates vast swirling drawings and huge hanging sculptures that she makes on a continuous line, wrapping VHS tape, rope and fabric, working to her own rhythm - often, we’re told, dancing to Abba.

She’s won on merit, say the judges, for work they called “bold and captivating.” But her win is historic. Acknowledging that she is the first artist with a learning disability to triumph at the Turner Prize does not diminish her talents.

It is seismic.

As with every Turner year, there will be detractors. That’s what happens. Art appreciation is subjective.

But this is a landmark moment and potentially opens doors to others who might follow in her footsteps.

Charlotte Hollinshead calls this a "major moment" for a lot of people - saying it has broken "a very stubborn glass ceiling".

"As Nnena is such a superstar, has worked so hard and has made history, she is ready to accept the call from the Palace about her Damehood," Hollinshead finishes to laughter and cheers.

Hollinshead, speaking on Kalu's behalf, continues with some remarks following the artist's win.

"We are so happy that Nnena's talent and beautiful work is now out in the world for you all to see," she says.

"This complex artist creates gorgeous complex forms all while listening to disco music - often as loud as possible," she jokes to cheers from the room.

She adds that Kalu began working with ActionSpace, an organisation which provides access to creative studios and professional guidance for those with learning disabilities across London, in 1999.

At the time her work "was not respected" and "certainly wasn't regarded as cool".

Hollinshead adds that Kalu has faced discrimination for her learning disability which continues to this day. "Hopefully this award smashes that prejudice away," she says.

Kalu is a learning disabled artist with limited verbal communication.

Nnena Kalu has been named as the winner of the Turner Prize - an announcement met with applause and cheers in Bradford.

Charlotte Hollinshead, Kalu's artistic facilitator, speaking on her behalf, says: "Nnena Kalu was a superstar."

"This amazing lady has worked so hard for such a long time - it's wonderful she's finally getting the recognition she rightly, rightly deserves."

It's just been announced that Nnena Kalu has won this year's Turner Prize.

Let's turn now to Bradford, where people are gathering ahead of the Turner Prize winner's announcement.

The stage, complete with a podium, has been decorated with a number of sheets - lit up in white and green.

We can also spot a number of attendees seated at tables as they wait for the big reveal.

You can watch those scenes yourself by clicking watch live above.

"Varied" would be a good way to describe the artworks that have competed for the Turner Prize over the years. The juries have seen everything: from a messy bed, to a painting made of elephant dung.

Some of the prize's most memorable works didn't actually win in their year. But - as with Tracey Emin's My Bed - they attracted intense media attention and launched the artist's career nonetheless.

We've taken a look back at some of the most memorable winners - or not - of the Turner Prize.

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We're expecting the winner of this year's Turner Prize to be announced within the next half an hour.

Our stream of the event has now started - click watch live to follow along at the top of the page.

The winner will then be announced at around 20:00 GMT - stick with us.

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The Turner Prize shortlist and winner are chosen by an independent panel of experts.

The panel includes gallery directors, curators, critics and writers. At least one member is from abroad, to balance British art with a broader context.

This year, the jury includes representatives from the National Gallery, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, and the Monsoon Art Collection - which features work from Central and South America, Africa and Asia.

The panel is chaired by Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain.

Jury members will select a winner from the shortlist on the day of the announcement, through discussion and consensus.

English flags, Korean spirits, reels of VHS tape and apocalyptic war zones all make appearances in the works shortlisted for the 2025 Turner Prize.

The four shortlisted artists are:

• Zadie Xa
• Rene Matić
• Nnena Kalu
• Mohammed Sami

Their installations have been on display at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford since September.

• Read our news piece for a more detailed look at the exhibition

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Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

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Winning this year's Turner Prize may feel especially poignant, as it also marks the 250th birthday of JMW Turner - the artist the prize is named after.

In fact, the shortlist was revealed on what would have been his birthday, 23 April.

Turner is one of the most celebrated English artists in history. His Romantic masterpieces include The Fighting Temeraire - and if you haven’t seen it, check your £20 note. It was also once voted Britain’s favourite painting.

Living in the era of the industrial revolution, Turner believed the artist’s job was to respond to the changing times. He thought that the old skill of painting wooden sailing ships was becoming outdated. Instead, artists should find beauty in the new - iron funnels, valves, and paddle wheels.

You can see all of this in The Fighting Temeraire, which shows the old HMS Temeraire being towed up the Thames by a steam tug in 1838, before being broken up for scrap.

• You can read more about The Fighting Temeraire here

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It’s arguably the UK’s most famous art prize.

Since its debut in 1984, the Turner Prize has been handed out each year to a British artist - that could be someone working mainly in the UK, or a British-born artist making waves around the globe.

Over the years, celebrities including Yoko Ono and Madonna have presented the prize.

This year’s shortlisted artists each pocket £10,000 ($13,294), with the winner walking away with £25,000 ($33,242).

Every other year, the prestigious prize decamps from London – this year, it’s Bradford’s turn to play host, although next year it ventures away from the capital again, and will be hosted in Middlesbrough.

While the contemporary art world sees it as a badge of global recognition, the conceptual flavour of many of the nominated works has split opinion.

Back in 2002, then-Culture Minister Kim Howells famously said: “If this is the best British artists can produce then British art is lost.”

He even threw in an expletive for good measure.

Ian Youngs
Culture reporter

Image source, Getty Images

The Turner Prize was set up in 1984 to bring extra attention to Britain's contemporary artists, at a time when they didn't get much space in either the Tate gallery or the media.

It was named after JMW Turner, one of Britain's greatest and most singular painters, who by coincidence was born 250 years ago this year.

The prize was set up by a group of donors called the Patrons of New Art, led by Alan Bowness, who explained the motivation behind the idea to BBC radio in November 1984.

His reference to Miss World as one of the inspirations - and his assumption that the Turner Prize would mainly be for painters - show how times have changed over the last 41 years.

Guy Lambert
Culture reporter in Bradford

What better place to host this year's ceremony than the school of one of Bradford's favourite sons, artist David Hockney?

Hockney attended Bradford Grammar School from 1948 to 53, and it's just across the park from the Cartwright Hall gallery, where work by this year's Turner Prize nominees is currently on show.

Hockney once turned down the offer of a knighthood saying he "didn’t value prizes".

But with £25,000 for the winner here tonight, while there's a lot of excitement in the room, for the four nominees I think there may well be a few nerves as well!