LONDON.- Mark Leckey has won Britain´s prestigious 2008 Turner Prize, the world´s top contemporary art award.

Australian rock star Nick Cave presented the award in a ceremony in London this evening. The jury was led by director of the London-based Tate Britain museum, Stephen Deuchar.

The prize was awarded on the merit of Leckey's video installation Cinema in the Round (2007), in which he presents his collection of film, television and video quotations in a sort of performance lecture. Fascinated by how the images on the screen seem to come to life, the artist talks about the transitions between two- and three-dimensionality and the relationship between object and image. The sculptural quality of the films comes to the fore in Cinema in the Round, in the 16mm film Made in 'Eaven (2004) and the videos Felix gets Broadcasted (2007) and The Thing in Regent's Park (2006). Made in ´Eaven gives us the impression that the camera portrays Jeff Koons's famous Playboy Bunny from all sides. Only when we see the reflection on the shiny surface of the sculpture – which reflects the artist's studio, but not the camera – do we realize that the sequence was animated. It was transferred to 16mm film and is presented on a pedestal, like a sculpture. In The Thing in Regent's Park, we see a curious animated sculpture (by J. D. Williams) walking through Regents Park in London, taking the same route that the artist uses to go to his studio every day. Mark Leckey will also use a zoetrope – a device that creates the illusion of moving images – to cause a reproduction of the rooster figure in front of the Kunstverein building to appear to walk.

In the 1990s, looking for new forms of expression in the medium, Leckey cut and manipulated music and found footage to make video-clips of his own. Today, however, image, film and television sequences have become easily and freely available on the Internet and the sampling technique has become a standard art form. This new situation has led Leckey to deal more closely with the making of his „own“ images and to consider the role of art and the place of art production in his videos and installations. Leckey became known through his videos, but also for his work with the band Jack2Jack. Together with Ed Liq, Bonnie Camplin and Enrico David, he created the band donAteller. Leckey recently had a solo exhibition at Le Consortium in Dijon, following projects at the Portikus in Frankfurt, the Migros Museum in Zurich, the Tate Britain in London and participation in group exhibitions at P.S.1/MoMA, Dundee Contemporary Arts and the Manifesta 5. Mark Leckey is professor of film at the Städelschule in Frankfurt.