The Turner Prize is widely considered to be one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe. The £20,000 prize was presented to Keith Tyson in a ceremony at Tate Britain on Sunday 8 December 2002, during a live television broadcast by Channel 4. The judges commended the way in which 'his work embraces the poetic, the logical, the humorous, and the fantastical and draws connections between them'.
Shortlist
- Fiona Banner – nominated
- Liam Gillick – nominated
- Keith Tyson – awarded
- Catherine Yass – nominated
Jury
- Michael Archer, critic and lecturer
- Susan Ferleger Brades, Director of the Hayward Gallery
- Alfred Pacquement, Director of the National Museum of Modern Art at the Georges Pompidou Centre
- Greville Worthington, collector and curator is this year's representative of the Patrons of New Art on the Turner Prize panel
- Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate
Turner Prize 2002 in quotes
If this is the best that British artists can produce, then British art is lost. It is cold, mechanical conceptual bullshit … The attempts at contextualisation are particularly pathetic and symptomatic of a lack of conviction.
Comments from Kim Howells, Minister of Culture, 2002
As a junior minister at the Department of Culture for Culture, Media and Sport, he is one of the few people in the country who is not entitled to air his opinions about art.
Editorial in The Daily Telegraph, November 2002