Supermarket singer on the Turner Prize Shortlist

A woman known for singing through a PA system at a branch of Tesco has been shortlisted for this year's Turner Prize.

Susan Philipsz is one of four artists in the running for the controversial contemporary arts prize.

The Glasgow-born 44-year-old is best known for recording herself singing versions of pop and folk songs which she has replayed in stairwells, supermarkets, and under bridges.

In Filter (1998), she played her own renditions of songs by Radiohead, Marianne Faithfull, Nirvana and the Velvet Underground through the public address system of a busy bus station, and in another work she sang through a PA system to unsuspecting shoppers at a branch of Tesco.

Other artists on the shortlist, announced today, include Dexter Dalwood, 49, a painter whose subjects have included the death of Dr David Kelly and the Charles Manson murders.

In The Death Of David Kelly (2008), the London-based artist painted a representation of the beauty spot where the body of the weapons expert at the centre of the Iraq dossier row was found.

In his painting Sharon Tate's House (1998), Dalwood attempted to echo the way in which the victims of the Charles Manson murders were not immediately seen when the police entered the living room.

Another artist, Angela de la Cruz, breaks, rips and folds her paintings in on themselves and displays them wedged into corners and doorways or presented on the gallery floor.

She considers the "stretcher an extension of the body" and broke the stretchers of her canvases as a student "freeing (the) painting from the boundaries of its support", according to the Tate.

Another of the London-based artist's works, Flat (2009), was a collapsed plastic chair with outstretched legs "as if unable to support the weight of a body".

The Otolith Group, named after the part of the inner ear that senses gravity and orientation, comprises two artists, Anjalika Sagar, 42, and Kodwo Eshun, 44, who live and work in London.

Their work has included a film which depicts the making of advertisements for financial services in Mumbai with sweatshop workers producing goods under extreme conditions.