ONE OF THE most prestigious prizes in art has been won by a video artist who created an installation based on a fire at a high street shop in Britain in the 1970s.
Elizabeth Price won the 2012 Turner prize last night for her work entitled ‘The Woolworths Choir of 1979′. The prize was presented by Jude Law at the Tate Britain gallery in London.
The award is presented every year to an artist under the age of 50 who is living, working or born in Britain, for an outstanding exhibition in the previous 12 months.
Price’s work has been described as using existing archives of images, texts and music to explore our complex relationship to objects and consumer culture. Her installation depicted a fire at a branch of high-street retail chain Woolworth’s in Manchester in 1979 in which ten people died.
Previous winners include Damien Hirst, who won in 1995 for a work which included a cow and a calf cut in half and suspended in formaldehyde, Anthony Gormley, who won in 1994 for his giant sculptures, and Steve McQueen, who went on to direct ‘Hunger’ and ‘Shame’.
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