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Mark Wallinger wins Turner prize

03/12/2007

Mark Wallinger has been awarded the Turner prize for Sleeper 2004/5 at a ceremony in Liverpool.

The British artist spent ten consecutive nights dressed up in a bear suit in Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie, with his winning entry an abridged video record of his wanderings.

Wallinger, who also wins £25,000, used his acceptance speech at Tate Liverpool to renew criticisms of the UK government's involvement in the war in Iraq and praise Parliament Square protestor Brian Haw.

Mr Haw's long-running protest was the subject of Wallinger's State Britain installation displayed in Tate Britain earlier this year.

Tate Liverpool, which is the first venue to host the Turner prize outside of London ahead of the city's status as the European capital of culture next year, says Sleeper 2004/5 stirs up "notions of national memory and allegory", culminating in an examination of "identity and representation".

The Turner prize's other nominees, whose work is being displayed in Tate Liverpool until January 13th, were Zarina Bhimji, Nathan Cole and Mike Nelson, who all receive £5,000.

Ugandan-born Bhimji's work is a collection of photographs and films made during her travels in India and eastern Africa said to convey "the qualities of universal human emotion and existence".

An extensive labyrinth of white corridors that lead to crude peep holes into a mirrored, desert landscape make up Nelson's installation, the Immersive Amnesiac Shrine.

And Coley's multimedia work, There Will Be No Miracles Here, hails a scaffold bearing the piece's words in light-bulbs as its centrepiece.