Film, drawings make Turner list

LONDON - Reuters

Photo shows ‘Sacrilege’ by Turner Prize winning artist Jeremy Deller, in Glasgow. REUTERS photo

The Tate Britain released a shortlist for the Turner Prize on Tuesday that will bring delight and despair in equal measure to the critics and supporters of modern art’s most prestigious and controversial award.

The final four chosen to contest the Turner prize included two filmmakers, an artist who mixes painting, film, sculpture and performance and a classic illustrator who makes painstakingly detailed drawings.The four artists named were Spartacus Chetwynd, Luke Fowler, Paul Noble and Elizabeth Price.

Their work will be shown in an exhibition at the Tate Britain museum in London opening on October 2 and the 25,000 pound ($40,600) prize will be awarded during a live broadcast on Britain’s channel 4 on December 3. Chetwynd’s paintings, carnivalesque performances and sculptural installations utilizing handmade costumes and sets are said to create an “atmosphere of joyful improvisation.”

Fowler weaves found footage and new material into films, which the Tate said evokes “the atmosphere of a particular era”, while video artist Price reanimates existing archives of imagery, texts and music in carefully sequenced films. Noble brought together the painstakingly detailed and engrossing drawings of the fictional metropolis Nobson Newtown for a solo exhibition at the Gagosian gallery.

“Undercutting the precise, technical drawing is a dark satirical narrative which unfolds in the micro-cosmos of these monumental works,” the Tate said in a statement announcing shortlist. British bookmaker Ladbrokes said on Tuesday they favored Chetwynd to win with 7/4 odds, saying her solo exhibition was the entry which has captured the attention of the oddsmakers at first sight of the shortlist.