Turner Prize - Alternative and Spoof Prizes

Alternative and Spoof Prizes

The Turner Prize has spawned various other prizes in reaction to or ridiculing it. In 1993, the K Foundation gave an "Anti-Turner Prize" of £40,000 for the "worst artist in Britain" with the same short list as the official prize: the winner of both prizes was Rachel Whiteread. In 1999, Trevor Prideaux organised the ongoing Turnip Prize as "a crap art competition... You can enter anything you like, but it must be rubbish"; the judging criteria include "Lack of effort" and "Is it shit?". In 2000 the Stuckists instituted "The Real Turner Prize" for painters, and an "Art Clown of the Year Award" for "outstanding idiocy in the visual arts", both continued in subsequent years (the Clown award given in 2002 to Serota).

In 2002, Quintessentially, a private members' club run by Tom Parker Bowles, ran the "Alternative Turner Prize" with judges including Brian Sewell, who said it was for "a wider and more generous choice of art and artist." In 2003, the Daily Mail ran a "Not the Turner Prize" competition. In 2005, the BBC staged a "Mock Turner". In 2002, the alTURNERtive Prize was established at Welling School in Bexley, London, by Henry Ward. The exhibition celebrates the contemporary artwork by students aged 14–18. Since 2002 the exhibition has been judged by critics such as Michael Archer (who judged the Turner Prize the year Keith Tyson won) and has been presented by Richard Wentworth, Hew Locke and Ryan Gander.

In 2007, an "Alternative Turner Prize" was staged at Tate Liverpool for those aged 13–25. Also in that year, Merseyside Stop the War Coalition held the "Alturnertive Turner Prize" in Liverpool with support from Mark Wallinger. And again in 2007 John Lowrie Morrison initiated the Jolomo Award a £20,000 prize for Scottish Landscape painting as a sort of Anti Turner Prize (now £25,000 for winner, £35,000 for all the prizes).

In 2008, a "Turner Prize" was promoted by two brothers named Turner for the Holmfirth Arts Festival with exhibits in vans.