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A Turner Prize to confound the sceptics

2012 December 4
by Paul Vallely

How tedious that the Turner Prize wasn’t won by the man who painted poo or the woman who lives and works in a nudist colony and changed her name to Spatacus “to remind people they have a choice in life”. Instead the winner of the prestige modern art prize was Elizabeth Price, whose trilogy of video installations draws from film and photographic archives and historic artefacts to generate fantasy episodes.

The Turner Prize to many people is beyond parody, though that did not stop the locals in a Somerset village pub who held their regular Turnip Prize last night in scabrous homage to a prize was has previously been won by a pickled cow or an empty room where the light flashed on and off.

But, apart from the Edinburgh Fringe style romps of Ms Spartacus, there was more obvious skill and depth to this year’s offerings. Elizabeth Price’s 20 minute piece, centred on a fatal fire in a branch of Woolworths in 1979, is widely accounted both poetic and profound.  At least the Turner is continuing to confound stereotypes.

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