A page of the Stuckists' 2009 protest leaflet, mocking Turner Prize head Sir Nicholas Serota
As the public await the winner of this year’s Turner Art Prize, Father Christmas is protesting outside the prize giving ceremony at Tate Britain.
The festive figure, or at least an impersonator, will be part of the annual demonstration by The Stuckists, a group who promote conventional means of artistic expression, including painting.
As usual, the competition for this year’s Prize is between four artists – Enrico David, Roger Hiorns, Lucy Skaer and Richard Wright – who lean towards the conceptual end of the art spectrum. Exhibits include bovine brain matter, and a suspended whale skull. And as usual, the Stuckists are not impressed.
Co-founder of the group Charles Thomson said that this year’s prize had turned into “a Monty Python sketch, with Sir Nicolas Serota (Head of Tate Britain) standing behind the counter praising art that has all the life of a dead parrot.”
"It looks as though the judges formed a shortlist by stabbing a pin in a telephone directory with their eyes shut," he added.
The front cover of the Stuckists' protest leaflet
Backed up by Santa, the group will be dishing out 5,000 leaflets tonight containing anti-Turner quotes from Prince Charles and Tracey Emin, along with 2,000 badges declaring: “The Turner Prize is Dead”.
The badges also quote 1991 Turner Prize winner Anish Kapoor, who said the event “was all a bit of crap”.
Meanwhile bookmakers William Hill say that bets continue to roll in ahead of the prizegiving ceremony at Tate Britain tonight.
They have declared this year's Turner Prize a bigger gamble than any other in history. One customer even attempted to put £5,000 on odds-on favourite Roger Hiorns this morning, a spokesperson for the company said.
"The Turner Prize has always been a controversial prize," he said, "but we have never had bets even close to this size."
The odds for the nominees are 10/11 for Roger Hiorns, 2/1 for Richard Wright and 13/2 for both Lucy Skaer and Enrico David.
