AFP/London
Former pop musician Elizabeth Price has won the Turner Prize, the top British contemporary art award, for her “seductive and immersive” video work entitled The Woolworths Choir of 1979.
Actor Jude Law presented the award and the £25,000 prize at London’s Tate Britain gallery, where the four shortlisted artists have been displayed since May.
It is the first time a video artist has won in more than a decade. The jury praised Price’s work, which combines footage of architecture, news reports of a fatal fire, advertising and clips of pop music performances, for its “seductive and immersive qualities”.
Judges said they were “impressed by the way Price creates a rhythmic and ritualistic experience through her film installations combining different materials and technical vocabularies.”
Price, who was born in 1966, beat competition from performance artist Spartacus Chetwynd, Luke Fowler, who made three films about psychiatrist R D Laing, and pre-ceremony favourite Paul Noble.
On receiving her award, the winner criticised government cuts to art funding and praised her state-school education.
“It’s incredibly depressing listening to the comments people made earlier that a young girl from Luton going to a comprehensive might not be able to imagine being an artist and might not have the opportunities I’ve had,” she said.
Price said the news footage of the fire at a Woolworths department store in Manchester in 1979 had been a deep influence. “I can’t remember what I thought about it as a child other than it made a significant impression,” she said.
The prize - named for J M W Turner, the 18th- and 19th-century British painter who was controversial in his own day - has often sparked a furore.
Tracey Emin’s My Bed, a stained bed, drew criticism from the then-culture minister as a “shock” nominee in 1999 but attracted an average of 2,000 visitors per day.