Video featuring Homer Simpson, Garfield and Titanic wins Turner Prize at Tate Britain

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A PERFORMANCE artist who uses film, sculpture and sound with images of Felix the Cat and Homer Simpson has won the Turner Prize.

Mark Leckey, 44, was handed the £25,000 award by singer Nick Cave at a Tate Britain ceremony last night.

And he seized the opportunity to slam the obsession with "shock art" spawned by previous winners such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

"I kind of hate the relationship the press in Britain has towards art,” he said. “I hate the way it’s all Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin and Banksy. They expect spectacle and shock. Art is not like that. The art world I know is not like that; it’s a whole other world.” 

He said the YBAs (Young British Artists) had "ultimately" done art a "disservice". But, on the upside, he quipped: "A lot of bad artists have made a lot of money.”

This year's Turner Prize has been criticised in some quarters for lacking in imagination. Leckey, who uses mixed media and imagery from across TV and film, has been derided as a "cultural archivist" rather than an artist.

His works include a videoed lecture, Cinema-in-the-Round, which features an episode of The Simpsons where Homer is horrified at becoming a three-dimensional being.

Tate Britain director and chair of the judges Stephen Deuchar said Birkenhead-born Leckey's works provoked fresh ways of looking at the world.

Leckey added: "You don’t need to be critically aware to get what I’m saying.”

He becomes the 21st man to win the art award since it was established in 1984  - fuelling fears the annual prize is inherently sexist, since he beat three female nominees.

But Deuchar insisted: "Of course I'm aware there has been a strong male bias over the years, and that's something I regret  but it's not something for which I have a remedy. I believe it wouldn't have been in the best interests of the Prize to drive our decision by different criteria on that basis. We choose the work and the artist goes with it regardless of who or what they are."