Helen Marten wins 2016 Turner Prize - 16ft giant golden bum misses out
HELEN Marten has won the 2016 Turner Prize.
The prestigious art award, which is open to any British visual artist under the age of 50, was handed out tonight.
As well as the honour of winning Britain's most coveted art prize, Ms Marten was also awarded £25,000 in prize money.
Born in Macclesfield in 1985, the London-based artist has studied in some of the country's most prestigious institutions, including the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, the University of Oxford, and Central Saint Martins.
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Ms Marten is known for using sculpture, screen printing and her own writing to construct pieces that reference both contemporary and historical themes, whether they are everyday or more outlandish.
Her installation for the Turner Prize was divided into three sections and used objects such as coins, cotton buds, eggs and snakeskin to produce a playful collage.
She described her work as "husked down" to "geometric memories of themselves".
Organisers of the competition described it as inviting the viewer to become "archaeologists of our own times, to consider family items as if we are seeing them for the first time".
Marten's first notable award came in 2008 when she won The Fitzgerald Prize at Oxford's Exeter College.
The following year she was awarded the Boise Travel Scholarship and in 2011 was recognised at the Prix Lafayette and was shortlisted for the Luma Award.
She went on to win that award the following year.
