Birds battle buttocks :-0

[j.m@talk]

LONDON (Reuters) - A pink hummingbird battled with a weather-beaten shed Monday for the Turner prize, one of the world's most contentious art awards, but they face stiff competition from a pair of pallid buttocks.

The quirky nature of the Turner prize entries invariably draws scorn from the critics, but up to 100,000 people flock to the Tate Britain museum every year to judge for themselves.

Simon Starling pitched for the 25,000 pound prize this year with an electric bicycle he rode across a Spanish desert and "Shedboatshed" -- a shed he turned into a boat, floated down the Rhine and then rebuilt as a shed again.

For those seeking enlightenment as to what it all means, he explained that his works were "the physical manifestation of my thought process."

Jim Lambie takes the shortlist prize for the most lurid exhibit -- garishly painted bird ornaments he found in a junk shop and laid out in a technicolor room that looks like a psychedelic trip from the Sixties.

Gillian Carnegie, one of the rare painters picked by Turner judges over the years, offered up for competition her "bum paintings."

Seeking to explain their purport, her Tate Britain biography said: "While apparently following the conventions of representational painting, Carnegie challenges its established languages and unsettles its assumptions."

The shortlist for the prize, to be presented live on television on December 5, is completed by Darren Almond's four-screen video installation showing his grandmother returning to the Blackpool seaside ballroom where she danced on her honeymoon.

The Turner offers Britain's scandal-hungry tabloids an annual opportunity to mock.

This year offers plenty of grist to the mill, but Tate Britain director Stephen Deuchar insisted British modern art was "in roaringly good health.

"I think in the last five to six years people have become much less scared of contemporary art. This is one of the most engaging and accessible of Turner shortlists," he told Reuters.

"This is one of the few contemporary art shows that touches the public," he added, and few would dispute the Turner's ability to stir up controversy.

In 1998, Chris Ofili won the Turner with a Virgin Mary figure made of elephant dung. In 1995 Damien Hirst won with a pickled sheep.

Artist Tony Kaye once tried to submit a homeless steel worker as his entry while pop superstar Madonna notoriously swore live on television when presenting the prize in 2001 to Martin Creed's bare room with a light that switched on and off.

[leprechaun_40]

Sounds demented

[zybch]

What a bunch of frigging twats!

I like the pickled sheep one though.



Which is not to say that I believe it deserved to win any prizes though.