Richard Billingham, for his solo exhibition at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, and for his contributions to The Sleep of Reason at the Norwich Gallery and to Scène de la vie conjugale at Villa Arson, Nice, in which he showed the extension of his work into video and a poignant return to places of childhood memory in his recent photographs.

Martin Creed, for his solo exhibition Martin Creed Works at Southampton City Art Gallery, Leeds City Art Gallery, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, and Camden Arts Centre, London, and Art Now: Martin Creed at Tate Britain, London, in which he reaffirmed the rigour and purity of his work and its characteristic mixture of seriousness and humour.

Isaac Julien, for his complex poetic film installations, that combine a theoretical sophistication with visual beauty, seen in exhibitions of his work at Cornerhouse, Manchester, the South London Gallery and Victoria Miro Gallery, London in collaboration with Film and Video Umbrella, and in The Film Art of Isaac Julien at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York (and tour).

Mike Nelson, for the haunting resonance of his architectural installations, which juxtapose a diversity of found objects, fusing numerous references and creating open-ended narratives that suggest a sense of threat, danger or life on the edge, as seen in his contributions to The British Art Show, National Touring Exhibitions and to Another Place at Tramway, Glasgow.