Turner Prize

“The Turner Prize is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

~ Oscar Wilde

Established in 1437, the Turner Prize is an annual award given to the most outstanding modern artwork of the year.

Organised by the Tate gallery and sponsored by the UK's well known "adult" TV station Channel 4 the winner receives £40,000 and becomes a contestant on "celebrity love island".

Cultural Impact

The functional relativity of the entries allows for the dog-fooding of certain critical cultural stereotypes. This enables the comparative power of orthogonal analysis to facilitate the introduction of new and meaningful media perceptions to the wider world and UK audience.

Winning

In order to win the Turner Prize you must succeed at the ancient and mysterious art of Lampshading. Lampshading is a sport in a sense. You challenge your opponent to a lampshading match, convince him to accept without informing him of the rules and then flee. Return the next day with as large total mass of a lampshades possible or a picture equivalent of such and then give it to your opponent. If your total mass is larger than your opponent you are crowned with a lampshade, the winner. Many times it has been conspired that the Turner Prize was just all about Lampshading, but was only proved during the 20th anniversary "People's Poll" where the best winner over the past years was voted for. The final winner was the winner of 1991, Anish Kapoor who's entry was in fact a large lampshade made of sandstone among other things. This created great controversy as critics of the Turner Prize hurled their lampshades at Tate Britain while supporters of Lampshading hurled them back. It was bloody and ferocious battle.

Community Outreach

Outreach projects in local schools and disability groups have also helped undermine typical views of the artistic mode of living, replacing them with a more rounded lydian panorama. This adds value, not only to the London scene but also contributes to an increase in the mental dishabille of participants.

2006 Competition

The 2006 entries are particularly strong. These semiotic artworks vividly illustrate the complex metaphors of post modern life and accurately counter-point, via the underlying harmonics, the true nature of idempotent reality.

Winning works are often the perfect summation of the artistic ideology put forward in Tycho and Brea’s seminal work “Object Trouve and the Erotic Potential of Duchamp’s Urinal” (Flywheel and Shyster 1983).

Fantastic examples of this years Turner Prize entries may be found hereand here

Previous Winners

• W. M. Turner
• Ted Turner
• Tina Turner
• Brian Sewell
• Bill Drummond
• Jimmy Cauty