Posted on 12/03/2007 4:32:18 PM PST by mojito
The conceptual artist Mark Wallinger, otherwise known as the Dancing Bear, has won the £25,000 Turner Prize for his monumental political work, State Britain, a recreation of the one-man Parliament Square anti-Iraq war protest destroyed by Tony Blair's government.
The installation, which was shown at Tate Britain at the start of the year, was Wallinger's 40-metre long replica, complete with banners and tarpaulin shelter, of the mini-peace camp run by Brian Haw opposite the Houses of Parliament from June, 2001, until it was demolished by the police in May, 2006, under new powers banning protests within one kilometre of the Palace of Westminster.
Wallinger, 48, one of the Damien Hirst generation of artists, is best known for Ecce Homo, his sculpture of Christ crowned with thorns that stood on the vacant Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square for a year.
He was the strong favourite for the prize, not least because he was shortlisted 12 years ago but lost to Hirst's pickled cow.
Conspiracy theorists and critics of the prize pointed to this - and to the fact that the Tate, where the work was shown, administers the prize - as strong indicators that it would be Wallinger's year.
Another of his well-known pieces is a monumetally long video - two-and-a-half hours - called The Sleeper. Made in 2004, it shows the artist, who was born in Chigwell, Essex, dressed in a bear suit prancing around an empty art gallery in Berlin on 10 successive nights.
State Britain took 14 people six months to make at a cost of £90,000. Unable to rebuild it for the annual exhibition to show the wares of the shortlisted artists which opened in October, Wallinger decided to re-show The Sleeper instead.
For a prize that thrives on publicity and controversy - one year it was won by Grayson Perry, a cross-dresser who makes poronographic pottery, and another year it was ridiculed when the winner was Martin Creed for a light bulb that switched on and off - 2007 has been a quiet year.
Unusually, the Stuckists, a pro-painting, anti-conceptual pressure group of artists who traditionally picket the prize, did not bother to turn up to the award ceremony - held for the first time in Liverpool - where Wallinger was presented with his cheque by Dennis Hopper, the American actor and film-maker.
Charles Thomson, the group's co-founder, described the entries as "utter bilge".
He said The Sleeper had "all the excitement of watching a pensioner do the shopping at Asda".
The view was sharply contradicted by Richard Dorment, art critic of the Daily Telegraph.
He said: "Though four outstanding artists were nominated, Mark Wallinger towered over the others. He is one of Britain's most thoughtful and most original artists and richly deserves this honour."
The jury praised State Britain for "its immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance".
They went on: "The work combines a bold political statement with art's ability to articulate fundamental human truths."
The other artists shortlisted were Nathan Coley, Zarina Bhimji and Mike Nelson.
Now that's "art"!
/S
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3CzYw5-qdA
I’m too stupid to understand art.
British artist Mark Wallinger is seen sitting in front of a banner, originally by the artist Banksy, of his exhibition "State Britain" at the Tate Britain art gallery in London in this January 15, 2007 file photo. REUTERS/Toby Melville/Files
The Turner prize is not named after Ted Turner, who also plays practicals jokes on the world with his CNN Network. It is named after Ezechiel Ebeneser Rachmaninoff ‘Zig’ Turner who invented the Turner Tuner to tune into alien sex cows mooing the earth while on leave from their milky way duties. Every artist in England knows this...
He gets your prize!
MY HUMBLE APOLOGIES!
Believe NOTHING you see - believe NOTHING you hear - believe NOTHING you read!
By using that one graphic to pose the ‘artist’ behind I was stupid enough to believe it was dependance upon oil he was protesting...GOT ME A GOOD ONE!
From the full image I later found, it’s clear what his message is. I’m eating humble pie...
Mummy, is that Mohammad the Teddy Bear?
Me thinks the only thing below the surface here is the turds...((;O)
The people who compete for this prize have grown tiresome in their adolescent attempts to épater le bourgeois long after le bourgeois have ceased to care.
You’re right! I was too quick to judge. I have asked the mods to remove the comment #8
Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry
A travesty of justice!
I could never be a "conceptual" artist - I mean, if you think I'm going to make an ass of myself prancing around in a bear suit for 10 straight days all for a lousy $50,000, why, I'd...uh...hmm...where do you get a bear suit, anyhow?
An easy fifty grand, unless in Bear Country mating season.
Does Grayson Perry go by the alias “Cindy Sheehan,” by any chance?
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