2008
Winner:
Mark Leckey
Shortlist:
Jury:
- David Adjaye, Architect and Director, Adjaye Associates
- Daniel Birnbaum, Director, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Frankfurt
- Suzanne Cotter, Senior Curator and Deputy Director, Modern Art Oxford
- Jennifer Higgie, Editor, Frieze
- Stephen Deuchar, Director, Tate Britain and Chair of the Jury
Turner Prize 2008
With not a painting in sight this year's shortlist made for a difficult and thought-provoking exhibition. Runa Islam's calm, deconstructionist films and Goshka Macuga's cool sculptures and interventions with the Tate archive were quietly discussed. However, Cathy Wilkes caused more of a media stir with her rigorous arrangements of commonplace objects and materials, including shop mannequins, that expressed the abject indifference of things.
In the end, though, it was 'modern day dandy' Mark Leckey who claimed victory, despite being lambasted by the tabloids for his appropriation of cartoon characters Felix the Cat and Homer Simpson. Favourite from the start with punter and pundit alike, it was Leckey's intelligent and intensely inventive remixing of high and low culture that impressed the Turner Prize panel.
The 2008 Turner Prize poster Other News
- Barack Obama elected first black US president
- Northern Rock bank taken into state ownership
- Boris Johnson elected Mayor of London
- YBA Angus Fairhurst dies
- Robert Rauschenberg dies
- Tate Modern acquires Maman, Louise Bourgeois' giant spider
- Francis Bacon's Tryptich (1976) fetches a record $86.3m
- Bacon fan Damien Hirst sells job lot of own works for £111m