2009
Winner:
Richard Wright
Shortlist:
Jury:
- Charles Esche, Director Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven Mariella Frostrup
- Jonathan Jones, Art critic, The Guardian
- Dr Andrea Schlieker, Director Folkestone Triennial
- Stephen Deuchar, Director, Tate Britain and Chair of the Jury
Turner Prize 2009
The best Turner Prize in living memory, according to one pundit, this year's shortlisted artists offered much for eye and mind alike.
Roger Hiorns' cow brains and crystallized bedsit questioned our assumptions about certainty, materiality and the future whilst Lucy Skaer's full sized whale skull and alluring yet illusive drawing of a whale skeleton implicated the body in the act of looking. Contemporary surrealist Enrico David's cast of uncanny characters floating in a theatrical black void drew us into a strange childlike world of imagination and uncertainty.
Though Hiorns was favourite it was 'dazzling outsider' Richard Wright's use of age-old fresco techniques to create luminous, quivering and ephemeral installation paintings that carried the day.
The 2009 Turner Prize poster Other News
- Barak Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize
- Michael Jackson dies
Artists Dash Snow, Coosjie Van Bruggen, Jeanne-Claude die - Oldest art in Americas found on mammoth bone
- Bank of England interest rates lowest in bank's 300 year history
- Swine flu pandemic threatened globally
- Tate acquires landmark painting The Apotheosis of James I by Rubens.
