Turner artist inquires within
An artist who had micro-cameras inserted into her every orifice for videos of her internal organs is among the four shortlisted for the pounds 20,000 Turner Prize, contemporary art's most prestigious award.
Mona Hatoum, 42, who describes her work as "exploring the beautiful and dangerous" had the cameras inserted in her mouth, nostrils, anus and vagina.The resulting video, Corps Etranger (Foreign Body), is on show at the Tate Gallery in London.
Her presence on the Turner shortlist has eclipsed in controversy the inclusion for the second time of the ubiquitous Damien Hirst. Hirst, 30, also shortlisted in 1992, achieved notoriety for works based on dead animals, including a pickled sheep.
The list once again excludes figurative painters, but includes the abstract painter Callum Innes, 33, who covers canvases with a monochrome ground, then removes paint with turpentine to create configurations.
The fourth artist on the shortlist is Mark Wallinger, 36. His work, a satirical comment on the social, class and power structures of British society, includes some painting but also installations. Last year he bought and designated as art a live racehorse, naming it A Real Work of Art.
The winner will be announced in November. The judges are: William Feaver, art critic of the Observer, Gary Garrels, chief curator at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, George Loudon of the Patrons of New Art, Elizabeth MacGregor, director of the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, and Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate.
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