Simon Starling's winning Shedboadshed
(By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent of The Telegraph(Filed: 06/12/2005) )
"Evidently nobody told the judges that painting was supposed to be back in fashion.
The Turner Prize, sometimes known as the Emperor's New Clothes Prize, was awarded last night to Simon Starling, a conceptualist whose installations are so odd and difficult to analyse that he is known on the art circuit as "the nutty professor".
His victory may at least do something to promote
the ancient craft of carpentry. Shedboatshed, one of the pieces he entered for the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain, started life as a decrepit boathouse, which he found on the banks of the Rhine in Germany.
He bought and dismantled it, built a boat from some of its planks and loaded the remaining ones into the boat, which he then rowed to Basle in Switzerland, where he was having an exhibition. He dismantled the boat and faithfully rebuilt the boathouse and put it on display. ..."
