Video artist and photographer Gillian Wearing, who recently exhibited to acclaim at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, has won this year's Turner Prize. Ms Wearing topped the competition's first all-woman shortlist to claim the £20,000 sterling prize, the British art world's most important award.
Ms Wearing, originally from Birmingham, makes documentary-like art featuring bizarre characters normally overlooked on the crowded streets of her adopted home, London. For one of her most celebrated works, Confess all on Video. Don't worry, you'll be in disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian . . ., the artist placed an advertisement in Time Out magazine to find her subjects.
"Not everyone I deal with is even potentially dangerous. Most of the time I'm really dealing with normalness, with just something bubbling under that doesn't quite seem normal," Ms Wearing told The Irish Times earlier this year.
One video work she brought to Ireland for the IMMA show, Sacha and Mum, a monochrome projection showing a mother and daughter brawling, also features in the artist's contribution to the Turner Prize show, currently on view at the Tate Gallery in London.
Ms Wearing is the latest graduate of Goldsmith's College, London, to take the prize. The London institution has become celebrated as the hothouse for the current generation of British artists. A previous Turner prize winner, Damien Hirst, was also a graduate.
The unsuccessful short-listed artists this year were Christine Borland, Cornelia Parker and Angela Bulloch.