2005
Winner:
Simon Starling
Shortlist:
Jury:
- Louisa Buck, London contemporary art correspondent, The Art Newspaper
- Kate Bush, Head of Art Galleries, Barbican Art Gallery
- Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith, art critic and Lecturer, Modern Irish Department, University College Dublin
- Eckhard Schneider, Director, Kunsthaus Bregenz
- Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate
Winner combines craft, concept and a journey – but can it be art?
The appearance of a ‘traditional painter’ on the shortlist, Gillian Carnegie, first attracted newspaper headlines, but it was Simon Starling’s Shedboatshed – a shed transformed into a boat and sailed down the Rhine before being reconstructed back into a shed in the gallery – that initiated the habitual flurry of ‘is it art?’ questions. In presenting the Prize to Starling, for the second year running the award prioritised an artist with a process-based practice whose projects mostly took shape outside the gallery. In this year the Tate Patrons relinquished their seat on the jury to be replaced by a ‘representative from the media'.
Simon Starling with Shedboatshed (Mobile Architecture No 2), after receiving the 2005 prize © Rolf Marriot
The 2005 Turner Prize dinner invitation 
The 2005 Turner Prize postcard (front) Quotes
‘Art for me is a free space to explore things. The things I do don’t always come out looking like conventional works of art. But then I’m like any artist these days working in relation to a long history of art. I think the press is a long way behind understanding this or responding to art in a sympathetic way. I got a lovely poem from a lady in St Albans about sheds.’
– Simon Starling as quoted in The Guardian, 2005
‘Shedboatshed is an object, a thought and an action. It expresses complex things quietly in simple bold steps. When an artist can turn a shed into a boat and back he has the kind of creative freedom we all need.’
– Visitor comment, 2005
‘I’m not entirely sure whether it counts as art … I’m dead certain that it’s not conceptual art. Then again, however, in just raising these questions, maybe it is.’
– Guy Dammann, Guardian Unlimited, December 2005
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