Never far from controversy

The Turner Prize was first presented, believe it or not, all the way back in 1984.

Created by the Tate Gallery’s (now Tate Britain) Patrons of

New Art, the usually super-rich and star-studded line-up helped acquire works which could be displayed at the Tate and promote contemporary art.

Over the years, their number have included the likes of singer Bryan Ferry, he of Roxy Music fame, and Pet Shop Boys frontman Neil Tennant.

Over one of their regular cocktail meetings, they hatched upon the idea for a British prize for visual arts to rival the literary world’s Booker Prize.

They gave it the name Turner after JMW Turner, the artist who spent time in Margate (the Turner Contemporary - also named in his honour - sits on the site of the former guest house in which he stayed).

Designed to be awarded to British artists, they gave the inaugural prize to Malcolm Morley, an artist famed for his photo-realistic works but who triumphed with two oil-on-canvas paintings inspired by a trip to Greece.

To spark a little controversy - something the contest would become familiar with over the years - he’d also lived outside the UK, in the US, for nigh on 30 years when he was awarded the prize.

He took home £10,000 for that victory - today the winner will pocket £25,000.

Designed to focus on recent works, rather than acknowledge a lifetime’s achievement, it has meant the focus has been very much on some young emerging talents.

But aside from a boost to the bank balance and a massage of the ego, the prize’s primary success story has been the publicity given to contemporary art and to the personalities behind it.

From Gilbert and George’s triumph in 1986 for their colourful photo montages and Antony

Gormley’s 1994 Testing a World View - which had five identical iron figures, made from a cast of the artist’s body bent at right angles at the waist, to Chris Ofili’s portrait paintings comprised of elephant dung coated in polyester resin in 1998 and Grayson Perry’s ceramics which triumphed in 2003, it has an uncanny knack of generating headlines.

(Somewhat aided in Grayson’s case, when he took to the stage to collect the award as Claire, his female alterego, wearing a frock and telling the audience “I think the art world had more trouble coming to terms with me being a potter than my choice of frocks”.)