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The winner of this year’s Turner Prize, for artists under 50, will be announced next week in London. MARY RUSSELLlooks at the often controversial award and at the contenders, whose work includes art using atomised aircraft-engine metal and the skeleton of a blue whale

IT’S THAT time of year when gallery-goers, art-watchers and the odd person like myself head for London’s Tate Britain. On December 7th, the winner of the Turner Prize will be announced.Loved, lauded and lambasted, this is the exhibition that gets everyone talking. It has been characterised as shocking, boring, with not enough women or too many women. We’ve had Chris Ofili’s elephant-dung work and Damien Hirst’s bisected calf, Tracey Emin’s bed and Grayson Perry as his alter ego, Claire, collecting his prize wearing a lilac party frock. (Plus, of course, his great ceramic pots.)