Bear bags turner prize
Published on: 04-Dec-2007
An artist whose repertoire includes dressing up as a bear to wander around a museum after closing time has scooped this year's Turner prize.Mark Wallinger won the first prize of £25,000 in Britain's foremost and most controversial contemporary art competition for his recreation of Brian Haw's ant-war protest outside Parliament.
His creation, exhibited at the Tate Liverpool gallery, involved building a £90,000 structure using Haw's tarpaulin shelter and tea-making area and included the original hand-painted placards.
Art critics uniformly lauded Mr Wallinger for his 'political coup', salvaging the tent from the police who had removed the original demonstration.
Wallinger, who had previously lost out on the prize to cow-bisecting artist Damien Hirst, told the Evening Standard newspaper: "I don't know how it feels to have won.
"I've managed to defer this moment for some time - I've practised losing."
The Turner prize has always courted controversy.
In recent years, it has been won by a transvestite potter who adorned his vases with pornographic images.
It was established in 1984 and is open only to British artists aged under 50.
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