Artist Laure Prouvost's Turner win proves it can still surprise
Laure Prouvost's film clip about fictional grandfather joins works by Hirst and Eminto prove coveted prize is still unpredictable
French-born film installation artist Laure Prouvost has won Britain's prestigious Turner Prize for a short film clip that in part tells the story of a fictional grandfather digging a hole to Africa and disappearing down it.
An emotional and surprised Prouvost, who lives and works in London, told a crowd of hundreds at the awards ceremony: "I didn't expect this at all ... I was sure it was not me."
After presenting the award, the Irish actress Saoirse Ronan brought Prouvost's baby onto the stage to a chorus of "aahs" from the audience.
The ceremony was held in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the first time the perennially controversial prize has been awarded outside England. Prouvost said she felt Britain was her "adopted" home because "this is the country that let me grow".
The Turner winner gets £25,000 (HK$318,000), with £5,000 for each of the three runners-up - Scottish conceptual artist David Shrigley, London-born painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Berlin-based English artist Tino Sehgal, who specialises in creating encounters between gallery visitors and people he enlists to talk to them.
Prouvost is known for films and installations with complex story lines and sometimes surreal interruptions, images and choppy editing. "I was not allowed to watch TV when I was little so I became obsessed with it. I'm catching up," she said.
Her winning work, , includes a 15-minute film purporting to be a tour of her late grandfather's sculpture studio. Instead, it shows how his outmoded works - some of them present in the room where the film is shown - have wound up being used to make furniture, or as a kitchen stand.
