Radical Turner works

Empty room: Subtle, obvious, accessible, difficult

By arts correspondent Rosie Millard

The Turner Prize is out and it is more radical than ever.

I'm not sure I have actually ever seen a large gallery in a national, subsidised collection which was wholly empty, bar an array of bright lights which flash on and off every five minutes.

Martin Creed, one of the nominees for this year's Turner, has done just that.

Of course, this work, #277, The Lights Going On and Off, is bound to become the obligatory Turner Row piece, but that is what the whole event is all about.

Billingham: Known for his portrayals of his family

The Turner Prize fulfils two obligations - it is a showcase for four (or more) youngish, British contemporary artists who have been doing interesting things during the last year.

Secondly, it encourages people like you and me to turn up to Tate Britain and engage with these artists and their work.

No painters

It is showy and shocking and always generates a wildly amusing and enjoyable argument about aesthetics, from Tracey Emin's bed to Chris Ofili's elephant dung, by way of Damien Hirst's sawn-up calf.

So who is in the line-up this year? A film maker, an installation artist, a conceptual artist and a photographer/film maker.

Not a painter in sight, and not a woman in sight either. The Turner does not do token gestures.

And a few years ago there was an all-female line up so gender prejudice is hard to sustain as an argument.

Julien: Formerly made conventional films and documentaries

The distinguished film-maker Isaac Julien is in the running. Two films are on show at the Tate for the Turner Exhibition; The Long Road to Mazatlan, set in Texas with two men and three showgirls on a roadside, and Vagabondia, an exquisitely lush piece set in the John Soane's Museum in London with a dancer choreographed by Javier de Frutos.

Both films avoid traditional narrative structure, but both are lavish and fascinating to watch. There is a particularly nice red acoustically lined gallery in which you can watch the first one.

Then on to Martin Creed, whose work #277, The Lights Going On and Off, is going to be the Daily Mail Turner Prize Cause Celebre this year.

Witty

Of course, Creed is always having a gentle laugh in this way. He once exhibited a bit of Blu-tac stuck on a wall, alongside a crumpled up ball of paper and a table jutting through a door way.

His work is just the sort of thing the Turner Prize presents well. It is subtle, and obvious, accessible and difficult all at the same time, while bashing you over the head with childlike delight in its witty tricks.

Richard Billingham first became a famous photographer with his excoriating collection of family photographs, Ray's A Laugh.

Show features Nelson's The Cosmic Legend of the Uroboros Serpent

We were treated to sights of his alcoholic father and chaotic mother as they rowed, threw the cat across the room and completed 2000-piece puzzles.

As we admired the choreography and balance of the pictures, we associated with Billingham and admired him for sharing his background with us.

In this exhibition he shows some of his landscape photographs and a collection of videos which again take us into the heart of his family. His tryptich Untitled is a monumental study of his father's hands.

Disorientated

And then to a little jaunt around Mike Nelson's installation The Cosmic Legend of the Uroboros Serpent.

Corridors, doors, dusty offices and what looks like a storage room for a gallery have all been built into the gallery at Tate Britain.

You wander around and become completely disorientated. Which is really what the Turner Prize is all about.

The winner will be chosen by a jury made up of curators and collectors and presented with a large (£20,000) cheque on 9 December by Madonna, who was not at the opening party last night.

Well, I suppose that would have taken away from the star quality of the provocative and engaging art on display.