Madonna hands over Turner Prize
Pop superstar Madonna will add her razzmatazz to the UK art world’s premier celebration tomorrow as she hands over the Turner Prize.
The chart queen - a keen art collector - will join artists and leading figures at the ceremony at the Tate Britain gallery in London.
Installation artist Mike Nelson is the bookies’ favourite to take the prize.
The Turner was established in 1984 and offers a prize of £20,000 to an artist under 50 for an ‘‘outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work’’.
Nelson’s display for the Turner exhibition - an annual showcase for the nominees’ style but not necessarily the works for which they were shortlisted - consists of a dusty room, which some visitors have mistaken for a gallery storerooms.
It contains a plastic cactus, newspapers, mirrors, army helmets and graffiti. Many art critics rated him the favourite when the shortlist of four was unveiled in May.
Bookmakers William Hill has made Nelson evens to land the award.
Other nominated artists are Richard Billingham, film-maker and photographer best known for chronicling his family’s home life in a series of photographs; installation artist Martin Creed, renowned for displaying a ball of Blu-tack and crumpled paper; and film-maker Isaac Julien, who has exhibited a video of gay cowboys.
The prize shortlist has always tended to favour cutting edge, avant garde artists and in recent years has only occasionally featured something as conventional as a painter.
Madonna has come to be known as something of a champion of the Tate since spending an increasing amount of time in London with her British husband Guy Ritchie.
She attended the party which celebrated the launch of Tate Britain last year and loaned one of the paintings from her own collection, Self-Portrait with Monkey by Frida Kahlo to the exhibition Surrealism: Desire Unbound at Tate Modern.
