The Turner Prize @ Baltic

What you see when visiting the Turner Prize – this year hosted by the Baltic in Gateshead – is not technically what the contestants are being judged on. Out of the four artists, only George Shaw was originally nominated for his exhibition at the Baltic, held earlier in the year, and even then, it had a different configuration.

Each gallery is an arrangement of the original shows the artists were selected for. It’s a reinterpretation of what they exhibited earlier in the year, perhaps in Berlin or Switzerland, to suit the layout of the Baltic’s gallery spaces.

Coming off best, but in turn the least interesting, is Hilary Lloyd. Her video installations are immaculate. The projectors, monitors and DVD players are fetishes seemingly revered by the artist, their exact specifications written up on the wall. However, the content – bits of buildings coming in and out of shot – is drab.

The other end of the spectrum is George Shaw. He is a photo-realist painter who subverts the material fetish of art by using enamel paint. But what he achieves by undermining the traditions of oil paint, he in turn impairs with his ready lust for detail.

Karla Black has had to more or less make a brand new piece of work. Unfortunately, she, or perhaps the Baltic, has decided to build an entranceway to the gallery from her trademark hanging polythene. It’s quite clearly a manifestation of a gallery convention and undermines what is otherwise a great piece of work beyond it.

Martin Boyce, in our eyes always the winner, is by far the most convincing – and most experienced, I might add. He’s seen the inside of more galleries than you’ve seen puddles in Scotland. His freestanding sculpture of what seems a cross between a school desk and a woodwork bench is better than everything else put together. It is bold, confident, well considered, and well good. [Andrew Cattanach]