In a shock move today the Turner Prize Committee awarded the prize to well-known Island artist Bert Burt for his entry ‘Realistic Portrait On A Flat Surface.’
The Committee expressed themselves particularly impressed by the ‘innovative use of unexpected materials’.
“No-one is more surprised than me” claimed Mr Burt in a press interview afterwards. “My submission was by way of being a one-off effort – a sort of sideline. I’m much more known for my work ‘Raw Egg Catapulted Onto A Pebble-dashed Surface, or my triptych series of montages, ‘Gas Explosions in Suburban Semi-detached Houses 1995 through 7’.”
“In fact it was only while I was immersed in my current opus ‘Random Metallic Arrangements Beneath Canal Water Surfaces’ that I stumbled on this revolutionary technique. I had gone into the local art gallery – mainly to dry out a bit, to be frank, when I happened to wander through an open door and found myself in this store room.
“To my amazement the place was piled floor to ceiling with brightly coloured images, all laid onto portable surfaces of various sizes. So that – as the curator explained -they could be arranged, or disarranged – at will throughout any given cubical area.
They had been rendered, he informed me somewhat apologetically, by ordinary people with no artistic training of any kind, and who were obliged to use paint because they simply did not have ready access to proper materials.
“Be that as it may I was at once enraptured by this previously unknown form of primitive art and decided to enter an example in the Turner. With the result you all know.
“So it’s not actually your work?’ queried one young and rather naive reporter.
“Of course it’s not my work!” Mr Burt retorted sharply. “Why would it be? Does Damien Hirst cut up his own animals, pour his own plastic? Did Tracey whats her name make her own tent? her own bed? No clearly she didn’t. It’s not the doing that matters, it’s the artistic vision required to recognise the event and to present it to the public!”
Clearly the gifted man was irritated by the inappropriateness of the question. Hurriedly I moved the interview on.
“Do you plan to do any more in this particular direction?” I asked.
Mollified, he smiled thoughtfully. “I think not’ he replied. It seems to me something of a cul-de-sac.But I will continue to explore aspects of realism with my provisionally entitled ‘multiform swellings in a landscape.”
“In other words, hills.” murmured the impertinent reporter. Fortunately Mr Burt we on his way out and appeared not to hear.
