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I HAD NEVER been to see a Turner Prize Exhibition before, so forgive me if I sound naive. I couldn't help being curious because of previous years winners, like the controversial, half cows in formaldehyde. I read one review which said that the prize was the most important event in the cultural calendar next to the Booker and the start of the panto! What I found, however, was all somewhat sober and relatively understated affair.  Opposite: Phantom Twin (detail) by Christine Borland

Christine Borland has been nominated for her 'Exploration' of the language of forensic science. Her exhibition is quite chilling in a funny way. I walked into the room and was met by a selection of plastic heads, dubbed, The Dead Teach The Living. The heads are apparently of people from different ethnic groups used in an anatomical institute in Germany during the last World War.; The Dead Teach the Living is meant to point out how 'Science has legitimised the dehumanisation of racial groups'. After reading this on the brief, I felt that these bland, white plastic heads spoke to me. I mean they did actually speak to be, but, oh well, never mind. To me the exhibit echoed the uniform ideals that Hitler attempted to create. The cold whiteness, but the facial features alarmingly striking and serene. Boland's other work,'Phantom Twins', equally chilling, were the artists own version of eighteenth century childbirth dolls; to aid aspiring Doctors in the act of delivering babies. The originals contained real foetal skulls. Borland's however, were thankfully plastic replicas with leather streched over the faux tiny features They made me feel quite sick - you know like when playing with the complimentary toys in the doctors surgery when you were younger; there was always something impersonal and unclean about it. I quite liked her last piece. It is a glass shelf where different bones had been layed, instantly recognisable as human. White powder had been dusted over them and said bones been removed like a reverse stencil effect. With the right lighting it created a spooky shadow like area underneath. All I was thinking was it would look rather nice in my newly refurbished dining room! Clinical? I could smell the discinfectant.

Gillian Wearing has been nominated for 'the sustained development of her work in this as seen in the Cauldron and more recently for her thought provoking video 10-16. I remember Gillian Wearing's work from a few years ago as I have pictures of them. She got different people to write on white card whatever they wanted to say. The photographs ranged from business men in suits to punks and old ladies. Anyway, Wearing's work consisted of two films.

The first Sacha and Mum, shows the relationship of, well, Sacha and her Mum at home. Sacha wears only bra and knickers? Mum is just Mum. They struggle perpetually. The video is forwarded and rewound producing an agitated choreographed ritual that borders on violence.

Both subjects shriek in a bizarre howl. I am not really sure about this one. It annoyed me like a bad song played over and over again. Is the idea for you to think their struggle is about violence or love, or maybe both? Never the less, her next film, 60 minutes of silence is really intriguing.

On first glance twenty six police men and women look like they are posing for a photograph. Waves of dircomfort wash through the line up like they have been there a really long time. You begin to notice you are being watched by the law. Then you notice the slight irregularities. High heels, unbuttoned jackets and smiles. The sense of authority is then diminished. If Gillian Wearing is in some way trying to take you on a trip of your own short comings she certainly achieved it.

I hated Angela Bulloch's exhibition. Even with all the explaining and theorising in the world, it just wasn't happening for me. Superstructure with Sattelites looked like a play mat for the teletubbie generation. It is a floor structure of bright fabric, serpent-like, crap-like on the eyes. Untitled from the Rules series was a set of rules printed across a wall of rules. I had no interest in it anyway. I am not sure if she was meant to be sarcastic. The only piece of her's that sparked any interest in me was Blip, a mechanical drawing machine that drew a heart line (think Casualty). B1ip I'm not even going to begin to Fathom, some things should just be left alone, you know. Angela Bulloch is nominated for her 'inventive use of a wide range of media and approach to exhibition making.'

Cornelia Parker is nominated for 'her exhibition Avoided Object, in which she showed her continuing exploration of the secret lives of objects and materials, both ordinary and strange'. On first impressions Parker's work seems obscure to say the least. It is more a play on words than asthetically pleasing variety of art and this I like. A selection of work Pornographic Drawnings is thankfully nothing like the name suggests. The only way I could describe it is how in nursery school you slap paint on paper and fold it over, when opened you get the desired 'butterfly' effect. Pornographic drawings made from an ink, Feric Oxide. This is produced, I think, from impounded pornographic film. (I didn't get to read any more, because I was pushed along by a group of very eager foreign exchange students). The macarbre Embryo Firearms, mask the poignant theme of what they are about to become. Negatives of Sound is made from the excess of the groove in vinyl records cut at the famed Abbey Road Studios. There is also an interesting array of objects called, Avoided Objects; fluff made into ear-plugs, a picture of threads from Freud's couch, exhaled cocaine, impounded and incinerated. My favourite has to be Twenty Years of Tarnish. Two silver goblets, obviously depicting marriage and the tarnish being something you get and ultimately spend ages trying to remove.
 

Mass (colder, darker matter), uses charcoal salvaged from a church in Texas, USA, that was struck by lightening, erected into a mobile. Cubic in shape, moving around Mass, it becomes almost three dimensional and is like a kind of fuzzy reception on your TV. It is what Mass stands for that really gets me. The church, a place of worship, being struck by lightening, an act of God? Oh, the irony of it all, I love it! Opposite: Mass (Colder Darker Matter) 1997  by Cornelia Parker

 
Parker's exhibition was a wonderful summation of my thoughts about the theory behind, (sorry about this) 'Modern Art'. Of course, it would be bordering on the creatively egotistical to have earplugs made from fluff hanging on your wall, but it is not really about that, is it? I am grateful to people like Borland, Wearing and Parker and maybe Bulloch for breaking down the traditional aforementioned, aesthetically pleasing Wall hangings, by producing their own interpretations of three dimentional. You now have to scratch metaphoric surfaces, thinking deeper than your first vision.

In terms of Parker's work, her play on words and the material she uses, pathetic, insignificant media, or is it? Just because we don't consider these things important, Avoided Objects is exactly that, and of course, making you think, which can't be such a bad thing, can it?