A RECONSTRUCTION of a one-man anti-war protest won the Turner Prize last night.
Mark Wallinger, whose other work has included roaming around a gallery late at night dressed as a bear, scooped the £25,000 contemporary art prize for his painstaking replica of Brian Haw's encampment. At Tate Britain, he staged a reconstruction of 6
00 weather-beaten banners, flags and placards.
Essex-born Wallinger had been hot favourite for the Turner Prize, which was also contested by the Glasgow artist Nathan Coley, for his candy cane-striped models of religious buildings, Zarina Bhimji's photographs of her homeland Uganda and a wood-and-chicken-wire construction by Mike Nelson. For the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Liverpool, Wallinger submitted a film, Sleeper, in which he dressed in a bear suit and wandered around a Berlin gallery over ten nights. He said the title referred to Cold War spies and that he was inspired by a film about a prince turned into a bear he saw as a child.
The prize jury praised his winning entry, State Britain, for its "immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance". Wallinger said: "Brian Haw is a most remarkable man who has waged a tireless campaign against the folly and hubris of our government's foreign policy. Bring home the troops, give us back our rights, trust the people."
The full article contains 231 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
