The last time I sat down to write about the Turner Prize was in 2014. Duncan Campbell, Ciara Phillips, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell made up the shortlist, with Campbell eventually taking the prize.

Twelve years later, I find myself writing about it again. Only this time, the Turner Prize has arrived in my hometown.

There is something quite extraordinary about that. For years, the Turner Prize has been an exhibition I've followed as an artist, educator and someone invested in contemporary art. To now see it occupying MIMA, in the centre of Middlesbrough, feels significant. Not simply because of the prestige associated with the prize, but because of what it represents for a town whose cultural identity continues to develop.

Four shortlisted artists, four distinct environments and four very different approaches to making. What interested me most, however, wasn't necessarily the individual works in isolation. It was how each artist had transformed the galleries into an experience of their own.

This is an exhibition that demands more than looking. You find yourself listening, navigating, questioning and, occasionally, feeling rather uncomfortable.

Marguerite Humeau // Torches

We enter through a translucent veil. Beyond it, something resembling an elephant lies motionless, accompanied by an unsettling sound that seems to travel somewhere between an animal's cry and a mechanical vibration.

Marguerite Humeau's ECHO, A Matriarch Engineered to Die imagines the final moments of an elephant matriarch. Drawing together mythology, archaeology and evolutionary science, Humeau constructs an alternative history in which elephants, rather than humans, might have become the dominant intelligence on Earth.

There is an immediate contradiction in the space. The softness of the fabric and the pale, almost clinical environment create an extraordinary sense of calm. Yet the sound is deeply unnerving. It feels as though something is struggling to communicate, its cry stretched and distorted, almost trapped within the room.

Looking upwards, glass forms and carefully controlled lighting extend the installation beyond the immediate sculpture. The veil continues overhead, enclosing us within this imagined world. Unfamiliar objects surround the elephant, suggesting something between an archaeological discovery and a ceremonial gathering.

I found myself trying to understand what these objects were, what purpose they served and whether I was witnessing a death or some form of transformation.

Perhaps that's the beauty of the work. It allows you to occupy a world before you've been given the information needed to understand it.

Moving into Humeau's adjoining gallery, the atmosphere shifts, although her speculative world continues.

Large sculptural forms emerge from tree stumps and sections of timber. Layers of beeswax build into extraordinary honeycomb-like structures, resembling fungi, insect architecture or organisms from an imagined future. Small glass vessels are embedded throughout, their purposes not immediately apparent.

The floor is particularly important. An almost continuous off-white surface connects the sculptures, softening the entire environment. Your movements leave subtle traces, making you conscious of your own presence within it.

There's an interesting relationship between the objects and their surroundings. The beeswax appears to grow from the timber, interrupted by these strange glass forms. I couldn't quite decide whether I was witnessing a new form of life emerging or the remains of something that had already existed. There's a tension between what feels natural and what has evidently been manufactured.

The exhibition invites us to question humanity's relationship with other forms of intelligence. Yet I found its strongest quality to be atmospheric rather than explanatory. At times, understanding the objects felt almost secondary to experiencing them. It is both serene and unnerving, a carefully constructed fiction in which death, survival and the possibility of another existence seem inseparable.

Tanoa Sasraku // Morale Patch

The transition into Tanoa Sasraku's exhibition is immediate.

Gone is the pale, almost organic landscape. We enter an environment defined by a dark, padded rubber floor that absorbs the light and alters our relationship with the space.

There's an unexpected feeling of security, yet the room also feels strangely corporate.

Monumental works on paper occupy the walls, their surfaces stained, folded and creased. Elsewhere, smaller works present subtle arrangements of bleached stripes, recalling the visual language of military decoration.

Dominating the room is an enormous table-like structure. Its arrangement resembles a chessboard, supporting a collection of small acrylic paperweights, each containing samples of crude oil. The objects themselves are almost absurdly ordinary. They're the kind of things you might expect to find on an executive's desk, decorative souvenirs celebrating corporate achievement. Yet here, presented together, they become something far more sinister.

Sasraku explores the systems of power that surround resource extraction, empire and conflict. Suddenly, these seemingly insignificant objects represent industries, political relationships and the consequences of decisions made far beyond the places where those consequences are felt.

I particularly enjoyed the contrast in scale. The immense paper works tower over the viewer, while the small paperweights demand closer inspection. The exhibition moves between the monumental and the mundane. There is also something seductive about the presentation. Everything feels controlled, considered and strangely luxurious.

It made me think about how power chooses to present itself, and how objects associated with exploitation can become symbols of status and achievement. Perhaps that's also where the work becomes challenging. Its presentation is so controlled that the violence and destruction it addresses aren't immediately visible. You must investigate the objects to understand the relationships they represent.

There's something unsettling about that contradiction. We're invited to admire the presentation of objects whose significance is rooted in exploitation. It's an exhibition that asks you to look beyond the surface.

Simeon Barclay // The Ruin

Simeon Barclay takes us somewhere entirely different.

Entering The Ruin, I'm immediately reminded of Mark Leckey. There's something familiar in Barclay's relationship with British working-class culture, industrial history, popular imagery and the way these references become entangled with personal identity.

The room is dark, illuminated by an imposing red light. Industrial scaffolding dictates our movement, creating temporary walls and passages that lead us through the installation. After the openness of the previous galleries, there's an immediate sense of confinement.

Large-scale, heavily pixelated images occupy the walls. Another illuminated work presents a landscape, revealing just enough of the horizon and sky to suggest somewhere beyond the constructed environment. The contrast is compelling. We're surrounded by the materials and language of construction yet continually offered glimpses of somewhere else.

Barclay's work explores his upbringing in Huddersfield, the construction of the M62 motorway and the relationships between class, race, masculinity and industrial heritage.

As we move through the scaffolding, the installation begins to feel like a journey rather than a conventional exhibition. Eventually, we reach an opening in the construction.

A film and recorded spoken-word performance take over, presenting the motorway as both a physical structure and a metaphor for movement, aspiration and personal history. Balloons hang overhead, their strings suspended above us. They introduce something strangely celebratory into an otherwise industrial environment. Yet there's also a sense of something that has already happened, a celebration perhaps coming to an end.

The work feels deeply personal, moving between public infrastructure and private memory. What interested me most was how Barclay used the architecture to control our experience. The scaffolding isn't only an object or a reference to construction. It becomes a means of directing us through a narrative. We're guided towards something, but the journey is as important as the destination.

There's a particularly interesting relationship between the monumental history of the motorway and the intimacy of Barclay's spoken words. One is concerned with national ambition and industrial progress; the other, with the individual trying to understand his place within it. For me, that's where the work finds its strength.

Kira Freije // Unspeak the Chorus

Finally, Kira Freije.

And this is where, for me, the exhibition becomes something rather special.

Entering the gallery, we're confronted by an expansive sculptural environment. Reflective metallic surfaces distort the light, casting scattered reflections across the space. A fine mist occasionally emerges, softening the structures and creating an almost dreamlike atmosphere.

It's theatrical, certainly. But there's also an extraordinary intimacy to it.

Freije's figures are constructed from slender strips of welded steel, their skeletal frameworks interrupted by remarkably expressive aluminium casts of faces, hands and feet. They appear simultaneously complete and unfinished, human and something other.

Throughout the room, individual figures inhabit fragments of what might be a much larger narrative. Some seem to celebrate, others grieve. Some reach towards one another, while others appear entirely absorbed in their own existence.

Birds occupy the space above us. Dogs sit amongst the figures. A stripped sofa, buckets and scattered objects contribute to the impression of an environment that has been lived in, or perhaps abandoned.

One figure resembles a jester. Another appears caught in an intimate moment of human interaction. There is an extraordinary amount happening, yet very little is actually explained.

What has happened here? What relationships exist between these figures? Are we witnessing the aftermath of an event, or have we arrived just before something is about to unfold?

It's precisely this uncertainty that makes the work so compelling.

I have always been interested in fictioning and the ability of objects to suggest narratives without necessarily confirming them. Freije's installation speaks directly to that interest.

It feels like walking into a story where the beginning has been deliberately removed and the ending is entirely dependent upon our imagination.

The sculptural language itself is equally fascinating. As someone interested in making and constructing objects, I found myself drawn to the exposed framework of each figure. The welded structures reveal how little material is needed to suggest a body, yet the addition of a cast hand, foot or face can completely transform its character.

There's something extraordinary about that relationship. These are unmistakably constructed objects, their materials and methods of fabrication visible, yet we begin to recognise expressions, gestures and emotions within them.

The sculptures don't attempt to conceal their construction. Instead, they seem to occupy a space somewhere between an object and a living presence. They are incredibly expressive, even when doing very little.

I found myself moving between the sculptures, looking for relationships and attempting to construct narratives from their gestures and positions. The installation disturbs and rejoices in human emotion simultaneously. The reflections, changing light, mist and arrangement of objects continually alter what we're seeing. Even the space between the figures begins to feel significant, inviting us to imagine what might connect them.

For me, this is where the theatrical environment becomes essential. It creates the conditions for these individual objects to exist as part of something much larger, without ever revealing exactly what that something is. Rather than presenting a fixed narrative, Freije allows us to construct one.

For me, Kira Freije is the artist whose work I connected with most strongly.

Not simply because of its visual impact, but because it leaves me questioning what I've encountered long after leaving the gallery.

It speaks my language.

What makes this year's Turner Prize particularly interesting is how differently each artist approaches the construction of an environment.

Humeau imagines alternative forms of existence. Sasraku exposes the relationships between objects, resources and power. Barclay constructs a journey through industrial and personal memory. Freije presents fragments of human experience without giving us a definitive story.

Each exhibition asks something different of its audience. Yet what stays with me is the importance of the spaces themselves. The floors, lighting, sound, surfaces and architectural interventions are not simply devices used to display the work. They fundamentally shape our encounters with it.

And then there's Middlesbrough.

Twelve years after I last wrote about the Turner Prize, it's quite extraordinary to be experiencing it here, in my hometown. I've often described what is happening across Middlesbrough as something of a golden renaissance. The development of independent creative spaces, the ambition of our artists and organisations, and the growing visibility of contemporary art across the Tees Valley suggest a town increasingly confident in its cultural identity.

Being involved in that creative community myself, I know that this ambition hasn't appeared overnight. Behind the exhibitions, new spaces and public commissions are artists, makers and organisations who have been working for years to create opportunities and demonstrate what's possible here.

The arrival of the Turner Prize is undoubtedly an important moment. But I don't see it as the beginning of that transformation. It's another chapter in something that artists and creative organisations across the region have been building for years. There's a responsibility to ensure that the excitement surrounding this exhibition extends beyond the prize itself, creating opportunities and sustaining the creative community already here.

We should be proud of what we've achieved, but perhaps more excited about what might come next.

After all, our town's motto has always been Erimus.

We Shall Be.