Former pop musician Elizabeth Price on Monday won the Turner Prize, the top British contemporary art award, for her “seductive and immersive” video work entitled “The Woolworths Choir of 1979”.
Actor Jude Law presented the award and the £25,000 ($40,500, 30,600 euros) prize at London’s Tate Britain gallery, where the four-shortlisted artists have been displayed since May.
It is the the first time a video artist has won in more than a decade.
The jury praised Price’s work, which combines footage of architecture, news reports, advertising and clips of pop music performances, for its “seductive and immersive qualities”.
“They were impressed by the way Price creates a rhythmic and ritualistic experience through her film installations combining different materials and technical vocabularies.”
Price, 45, beat competition from performance artist Spartacus Chetwynd, Luke Fowler, who made three films about psychiatrist R. D. Laing, and pre-ceremony favourite Paul Noble.
The prize — named for J. M. W. Turner, the 18th- and 19th-century British painter who was controversial in his own day — has often sparked a furore.
Tracey Emin’s “My Bed”, a stained bed surrounded with detritus, drew criticism from the then-culture minister as a “shock” nominee in 1999 but attracted an average of 2,000 visitors per day.
Since 2000 the Turner show has often attracted protests from traditionalist art activist group the Stuckists, who want a return to figurative painting.
London-based Price was a former member of Talulah Gosh, a 1980s guitar-pop group from Oxford.