Rabbithole reveals fragmented beauty in The Turner Prize’s 2025 identity

When the Turner Prize comes to Bradford for the first time in its four-decade history, it does so through an identity that refuses polish. Rabbithole, the Yorkshire and Glasgow-based creative studio behind the visual system, has created something that rewards patience – scattered circular cut-outs that reveal bursts of colour, glimpses of artworks and fragments of text beneath. This isn’t about presenting something whole and pristine. The design embraces gaps, layers and what lies partially hidden. Bradford, designated the 2025 UK City of Culture, is hosting the world-renowned contemporary art award at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery from September 2025 to February 2026. The four shortlisted artists – Nnena Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa – will see their work displayed within this layered visual framework, one that speaks to the district’s own character. The brief presented Rabbithole with a balancing act: carry the critical rigour of a Tate-led award while feeling unmistakably Bradford. The identity needed to function at civic scale – posters, city dressing, public wayfinding – and inside the exhibition without competing with the artworks. Inclusivity was explicit: welcome first-time visitors in Bradford while remaining credible to art-world audiences and media. Early workshops kept circling back to Bradford’s contradictions – grit and grace, history and reinvention. “That became the north star for the ‘fragmented beauty’ concept: revealing value through gaps, layers and partial views,” Creative Director Tim Dee explains. The studio translated this into scattered circular cut-outs that expose what sits underneath, rewarding a second look. They pushed this physically first – die-cuts, stacked panels – before echoing it in motion and 3D graphics.