Turner Prize 2016: Poetic puzzles, peculiar materials and a huge pair of buttocks

Bare buttocks and a model train dominate sculpture-heavy shortlist

Anthea Hamilton is shortlisted for her Lichen! Libido! Chastity! exhibition featuring this stand-out installation (Tate)

The annual Turner Prize winner is to be crowned at the Tate on Monday.

The prize, named after innovative British painter JMW Turner, is awarded to artists under 50 who are judged to have put on the best exhibition of the year.

Four artists are in the running to win the accolade, which was first awarded in 1984.

The prize aims to “promote public debate around new developments in contemporary art”.

As such, the Turner Prize has a reputation for controversy and this year’s prize is notable for including artist Anthea Hamilton’s exhibition which featured a colossal pair of buttocks being gripped by a pair of hands.

The winner of the prize receives £25,000, the other shortlisted artists each receive £5,000

Previous winners include Damien Hirst who exhibited his work The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living – a shark in a formaldehyde tank, and Tracy Emin, who exhibited My Bed – a soiled and dishevelled bed.

Here is a little more about each of this year’s nominees:

Anthea Hamilton

(Tate (Tate)

Hamilton explores a range of scales and mediums from sculpture to performance art, often drawing on the comic, sexual and surreal. She is shortlisted for Anthea Hamilton: Lichen! Libido! Chastity! at SculptureCentre, New York.

Michael Dean

(Tate (Tate)

Dean works mainly in sculpture, focusing on the “phsyical presentation of language”. The everyday urban environment strongly features and he makes use of unexpected materials widely considered to be ugly. He is shortlisted for two exhbitions: Sic Glyphs at South London Gallery and Qualities of Violence at de APpel arts centre, Amsterdam.

Helen Marten

(Tate (Tate)

Marten finds inspiration in an eclectic range of objects. Her work is hard to interpret or classify, making it all the more intriguing. She is shortlisted for a variety of projects including Eucalyptus Let Us In at Green Naftali, New York.

Josephine Pryde

(Tate (Tate)

Pryde is enthralled by the relationship between art and photography, focusing on the idea of art as a commodity and questining the traditions of the art world. She is shortlisted for lapses in Thinking By the person i Am at CCA Wattis, San Francisco.