A French artist has won Britain’s most well-known art competition, the Turner Prize, with a video installation set in a mocked up tea party.
London-based Laure Prouvost won with a work called Wantee, which judges described as outstanding and moving.
The award, which earns the winner £25,000, was presented by Irish actress Saoirse Ronan, of the 2007 film Atonement.
The world famous exhibition was held in the first ever UK City of Culture, Derry, in the county of Londonderry.
It is the first time it has been staged outside of England.
Prouvost said: “Thank you for adopting me, for having a French one, I feel adopted by the UK.”
Wantee shows art work created by a central character of the film, Prouvost’s fictional grandfather, being used for domestic duties by his wife.
It symbolises how an artist who dreams of his work being displayed in books and galleries loses control of it and ultimately it has an unglamorous fate in the household.
The video was created to feature in an exhibition honouring the artist Kurt Schwitters, a German painter who moved to the UK during World War Two.
It features a tea party setting which is an imagining of what could have happened if her grandfather had known Schwitters.
It opens with the question: “Would you like some tea?” The title is Wantee because Schwitters’ girlfriend was nicknamed Wantee as she repeatedly asks “want tea”.
Four artists — Prouvost, Tino Sehgal, David Shrigley and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye — were vying for the award, Sky news informs.
