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[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
As ever, it was a mixed bunch of artists in the shortlist for the 2003 Turner Prize. Two bad boys, one Irish film-maker, one sculptor of decay, and one happily-married transvestite potter make this another provocative and challenging year.
The brothers Chapman seek to provoke. If they don't create 'absolute moral panic' in those looking at their work, they think they've failed. Earlier in their career they mutilated mannequins with blood and gore, or added misplaced genitalia. They have graffitied the works of the Spanish master Francisco de Goya, and now, in a brazen hoax, they're creating primitive totems that feature modern consumer items such as McDonald's fries.
With his background in the political factionalism of Ireland, film-maker Willie Doherty uses his art to question what the modern media tells the public. According to Doherty, images from photography, advertising, television and cinema distort the truth, resulting in a kind of collective false-memory syndrome which he demonstrates in his own installations and photography.
Rotting flowers, melting ice and decaying fruit form part of Anya Gallacio's 'aesthetic of the organic'. She has cast trees in bronze, adorned them with real apples, and then allowed the fruit to decompose on the gallery floor. Her works are often elegiac studies of the passage of time.
The art of Grayson Perry is a contradiction in terms. He makes lustrous classic urns in the tradition of the great civilisations, and adorns them with the bitter images of our own way of life – such as empty consumerism, unhappy marriage and child abuse. He is also a happily-married transvestite with a media-friendly alter ego called Claire.
See how this year's artists compare with others in 20 years of the Turner Prize
Graphics version (includes layout and images)