Jameel Prize 3 - V&A

In 2011, a 16th-century Persian manuscript of Shahnameh – the national epic of Iran - sold for £7.4m at Sotheby’s in London. It broke the record price at auction for an Islamic work of art, and showed the huge rise of interest in this neglected sector.

Now the spotlight is turning onto the contemporary art of the Islamic world, and December sees the unveiling of the third Jameel Prize: a newish gong based at the V&A Museum which has run every other year since 2009. The prize winner announced on 10 December ,   from a shortlist consisting of Faig Ahmed, Nada Debs,  Mounir Fatmi,  Rahul Jain,  Dice Kayek,  Waqas Khan,  Laurent Mareschal,  Nasser Al Salem,  Florie Salnot and  Pascal Zoghbi .

The prize, just as the Turner Prize did in its day, has entered the fray to up the ante in Islamic art. The venue is appropriate as the V&A has long had one the world’s great collections of Islamic art and opened the dedicated Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art in 2006. The V&A's Islamic collection goes back to the 1850s, a product of the Victorian interest in decoration and decorative art which also found expression in chroniclers of design and pattern such as Owen Jones and Augustus Pugin.

Expect calligraphy - Mounir Fatmi's video piece Modern Times, a History of the Machine and Kul, by Nasser Al-Salem both use script – as well as contemplative works such as Tranquil Pool, by Waqas Khan, 2012, a huge pattern like the sun. Then there are pieces that reference the art of the past, like Hollow, by Faif Ahmed - which deconstructs the rhythms in Azerbaijani carpets by rearranging their patterned elements.

The prize’s remit is to build bridges with the wider world of contemporary art, and the judging panel includes British designer Thomas Heatherwick alongside previous winner Rachid Koraïchi. This team went through 270 entries to come up with the ten finalists on show, and on 10 December the winner will be announced by Iraq-born archictect and patron of the Jameel Prize, Zaha Hadid - the most famous female architect in the world.

There will be quite a few eyes on this year’s prize, and not just because of the £25,000 prize. As Edward Gibbs, Sotheby’s head of Islamic art, says: “There’s been a huge leap in prices [of Islamic art]. It’s a growth area.” This is chiefly down to the extraordinary upsurge in museums of Islamic art around the world, including the new Islamic galleries at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto and the I.M. Pei designed Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar - and art fairs in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Wealthy collectors from across the Islamic world are seeking to invest in what Gibbs calls their ‘cultural patrimony’. “The interest is global," he says, and the only way is up. 

Admission: Free
Address and map: Victoria and Albert Museum, London SW7 2RL Nearest tube: South Kensington