TATE BRITAIN


TATE BRITAIN

Turner Prize

The Turner Prize: Year by Year

2002

Winner:
Keith Tyson

Shortlist:

Jury:

  • Alfred Pacquement, Director, Pompidou Centre
  • Susan Ferleger Brades, Director, Hayward Gallery
  • Michael Archer, writer and critic
  • Greville Worthington, representative of the Patrons of New Art
  • Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate
Turner Prize 2002 exhibition website

Minister of Culture, Kim Howells, vents out against shortlist

For the first time nomination forms were made widely available, appearing in The Guardian newspaper. It was also the first year that the public were invited to leave comments on boards in a revamped reading room, which proved to be hugely popular.

One comment, left by a government minister, Kim Howells, made front-page headlines. Describing the exhibits as ‘cold, mechanical conceptual bullshit’ he fostered responses from critics, who mostly came out in support of the artists.

img 1 credit line ‘Minister of Culture’ Kim Howells holding his comment card, depicted as Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living
© Ingram Pinn, The Financial Times, 2002
The 2000 Turner Prize / London Eye poster The 2000 Turner Prize / London Eye poster
The 2000 Turner Prize poster The 2000 Turner Prize poster

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

 

Other News

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  • Miss World contest relocates to London following violent riots in Nigeria
  • Opening of Baltic, Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England
  • Man group start sponsoring the Booker Prize
  • Rubens painting sells for £49.5 million