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Fiona Banner

The Turner Prize, an annual British arts competition, has in recent years been dominated by conceptual art. This year's short list of four nominees includes Fiona Banner, who creates large-format works filled with detailed text descriptions of movies. One of her Turner-nominated pieces describes a porno film called Arsewoman in Wonderland.

Not a moment or detail in this undoubtedly ludicrous and unedifying porn flick escapes her attention. I'm sure Banner finds it as fascinating and tacky as most of us, and her descriptions take in all the "nob" actions, all the wet quims, the fake orgasms. Everything is carefully, mechanically observed. The whole thing is printed in a seedy orange colour, in a slyly nasty and intermittently clear typeface across a creased, billboard-sized sheet of paper (itself glued over a mat of earlier sheets, billposting style).

Banner's website has a large photo of Arsewoman and other pieces. The Guardian flips the obligatory "But is it art?" question and invites porn producer Ben Dover to answer the question: "It's art. But is it porn?" (Nov 2002)

Fiona Banner, the artist who painted a massive text description of a porn video, didn't win the Turner Prize, but she did get her own Metafilter thread. (Dec 2002) ~0~