"Memory Bucket " takes Turner Prize

An artist who made a film about President Bush's home town, has been awarded the Turner Prize, Britain's top honor for modern art.

Entitled "Memory Bucket," the winning work by Jeremy Deller is comparatively tame for the prize, regularly derided for relying on shock value at the expense of traditional art. In recent years, unusual entries have included an unmade bed, a pickled cow, a painting adorned with elephant dung and lead casts of every item on a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant's menu.

Last year, transvestite ceramist Grayson Perry wore a lilac dress when he collected his Turner Prize check. He had won by creating vases depicting subjects, including death and child abuse, wrote the Seattle Post.

According to the CBC News, Deller's movie features encounters with the residents of Crawford, including one who is a survivor of the 1993 Waco standoff.

It also shows Bush's favourite burger joint, and closes with footage of a crowd of bats streaming out of a cave at sunset, turning the sky black.

Deller, 38, was the youngest of the artists on the Turner short list. The prize is worth the equivalent of $49,000 US.

Deller has specialised in curating art and producing "events" rather than conventional artworks that can be bought and sold. At school he has said he had no skill in drawing or painting.

Deller produces films, photographs and books of these "happenings". He took three years to put together The Battle of Orgreave, a piece of "living history" organised in 2001.

For three years he worked to bring together mining veterans and members of societies who re-enact famous battles to restage the notorious clash between miners and police during the miners’ strike, reports the Scotsman.