The prize will be awarded on 5 December and there is already a marked
shift in the style of art that is fancied by the glitterati who
will take part in the selection process. Is this an acknowledgment
of a change of direction first mooted by Saatchi last year? We are,
of course, told that there is absolutely no connection. Some say
that Gillian Carnegie, a flower painter from London, is the favourite.
But she has also painted her own bottom from several angles quite
recently. There are no Rachel Whiteread concrete clones, nor Damien
Hirst pickles in the selection of the four finalists. The other
finalists, Darren Almond, Jim Lambie and Simon Starling bear a closer
relationship to recent Turner Prize obsessions, which may now prove
to be their undoing.