Prize Recipients 1984 Malcolm Morley 1996 Douglas Gordon 1985 Howard Hodgkin 1997 Gillian Wearing 1986 Gilbert & George 1998 Chris Ofili 1987 Richard Deacon 1999 Steve McQueen 1988 Tony Cragg 2000 Wolfgang Tillmans 1989 Richard Long 2001 Martin Creed 1990 Prize suspended 2002 Keith Tyson 1991 Anish Kapoor 2003 Grayson Perry 1992 Grenville Davey 2004 Jeremy Deller 1993 Rachel Whiteread 2005 Simon Starling 1994 Antony Gormley 2006 Tomma Abts 1995 Damien Hirst 2007 Mark Wallinger
I’ve been asked to talk about The History of the World which is the big wall drawing in front of you. There’s a quote by Lenin which is "everything is connected to everything else" and that could almost be the title of this work cos it’s how my brain works in a lot of ways how I try to connect things up, and it’s how I work as an artist in that respect.I did a work called Acid Brass which was when I got a brass band to play Acid House music. And this diagram explains it in the way that I thought that brass bands and Acid House music actually have a lot in common even though on the face of it they have nothing in common whatsoever. They’re both these forms of folk and popular music, they’re both very strong, had a very strong following in the north of England, or still do. And also they have a connection in the middle with trade unions, with the media hysteria that surrounded Acid House music and drug culture, and also with the miners’ strike. So they meet in the middle really with civil unrest as you can see.I have to say that it was one of the most pleasant experiences as an artist to work with a brass band, to hang out with those guys and to go to the concerts with them which were just great social occasions. And that’s something that I try to bring out in my work: a sense of enjoyment of what I do.
