Becks winner hard to fathom

Yoko Ono presents Becks Futures winner Saskia Olde-Wolbers with her prize
The Weekender

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A six-minute film shot in a children's paddling pool was last night named the finest modern artwork of 2004 - earning its director £24,000.


In its fourth year the Becks Futures prize last night out-shone the ever controversial Turner in terms of sheer perversity, handing the beermaker's money to a film so avante-garde most of us would be hard pressed to make head or tail of it.

London-based Saskia Olde-Wolbers, 33, received her winner's cheque from Yoko Ono at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

She was one of only three video artists on the shortlist. Her installation Interloper follows the voice of a comatose man as he travels through the interior of a hospital.

The Dutch-born artist, who also won the prestigious Baloise Prize in 2003, makes only one film a year, meticulous narrations of stories over mutating, animated shapes.

Olde-Wolbers, who studied for her MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design, said: "The framework for my stories is often a disturbance in everyday life, characters coping with the world in a slightly off-the-wall manner."

Mark Dion, one of the judges, said: "If anyone were to have told me I would be one of the judges awarding a prize to a narrative video, I would have scoffed. However, the excellence of Saskia's work completely won me over.

"We sincerely hope that this award will allow her to continue and expand her complex visual language and narrative virtuosity."

The remaining nine shortlisted artists won £4,000 each.

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