Sex and death at London’s Tate Britain.

The annual feeding frenzy that is the Turner Prize opened to the usual tabloid “how crap” whimpers. It doesn’t celebrate Wessex watercolours so it seems that the hypercritically vacuous reactions will always resound, and this year’s shortlist is as challenging as the genuinely interested might anticipate.

Anya Gallaccio makes art torn between living/decomposing materials like trees and the indestructibility of metal or glass. The symbolism of rotting flowers under glass might be emotional but it’s not sentimental.

The double-projection, Re-Run, features Willie Doherty caught forever running full pelt over Craignon Bridge between Catholic and Protestant Londonderry. Watching him from both passive viewer and aggressive pursuer positions, we’ll never know which he is. Visually simple, Doherty’s mix of territorial and violent implications are made subtly ambiguous by what the camera doesn’t show.

Serving up a healthy dose of cynical humour and “bourgeois convulsion” are Jake and Dinos Chapman. Their defaced Goyas enhance the images’ horror with a 21st-century, Stephen King edge, while they’re also destroyed. Sex, a decomposing joke-shop reworking of an earlier piece, and Death, two sex dolls at it on a lilo, might spark debate but as usual the Chapmans drown it in enough references to say nothing clearly.

Finally, Grayson Perry makes some nice pots using the language of tabloid suburbia to decorate them. In an unexpected meeting of autobiography, craft, tales of abused children and his true-life alter ego, Claire, Perry decorates his vases with society’s failings.

More accessible than a light bulb turning on and off, this year’s show is definitely worth a visit. Rowan Kerek 07 November 03

The Turner Prize 2003 is at Tate Britain, London, until 18 January 04. The winner will be announced on 07 December 03.

useful link: tate: turner prize 2003