Imaginary portraitist up for Turner

Yiadom-Boakye’s portraits depict subjects who do not exist outside of her paintings

A portrait painter, whose subjects are imaginary, is one of four artists in contention for the 2013 Turner Prize.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye joins French installation artist Laure Prouvost, Britain’s David Shrigley and the British-German performance artist Tino Sehgal on this year’s shortlist.

This year’s Turner exhibition will be held at Ebrington in Derry-Londonderry, 2013′s UK City of Culture.

The winner – who will receive £25,000 – will be announced on 2 December.

The other shortlisted artists will each receive £5,000.

Established in 1984, the Turner Prize is awarded to a contemporary artist under 50, living, working or born in Britain, who is judged to have put on the best exhibition of the last 12 months.

Previous winners include Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley and last year’s recipient, the video artist Elizabeth Price.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, who lives and works in London and is of Ghanaian descent, is shortlisted for her Extracts and Verses exhibition at the Chisenhale Gallery.

Born in 1977, she attended Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Falmouth College of Arts and the Royal Academy Schools.

David Shrigley is well-known for his humorous drawings and images

According to the prize’s organisers, Yiadom-Boakye’s “intriguing” paintings “appear traditional but are in fact much more innovative”.

“Her portraits of imaginary people use invented pre-histories and raise pertinent questions about how we read pictures in general, particularly with regard to black subjects.”

Glasgow-based David Shrigley is best known for his humorous line drawings, but also makes sculptures, photographs, paintings and animated films.

His work, which combines jokes and commentary, can be found on greetings cards, in books and in magazines, as well as in galleries.

Born in Macclesfield in 1968, Shrigley is shortlisted for his solo exhibition Brain Activity, at London’s Hayward Gallery.

The exhibition, said the Turner Prize organisers, was a “comprehensive overview” that revealed “his black humour, macabre intelligence and infinite jest”.

Born in Lille in 1978, Laure Prouvost won the fourth Max Mara art prize for women in 2011 for her short films and installation work.

Based in London, she is shortlisted for her new work Wantee, featured in Tate Britain’s Schwitters in Britain exhibition, and her two-part Max Mara art prize installation.

Her “unique” approach to film-making, said organisers, “employs strong story-telling, quick cuts, montage and deliberate misuse of language to create surprising and unpredictable work”.

Born in 1976 and based in Berlin, Tino Sehgal has been shortlisted for his “pioneering” projects This Variation and These Associations.

Tino Sehgal with some of the participants of These Associations

The latter, staged last year at Tate Modern in London, invited the public to interact with volunteers in a “live installation” staged in the gallery’s expansive Turbine Hall.

“Both structured and improvised, Seghal’s intimate works consist purely of live encounters between people and demonstrate a keen sensitivity to their institutional context,” said organisers,

“Through participatory means, they test the limits of artistic material and audience perception in a new and significant way.”

This year’s jury is chaired by Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis and includes the curator Annie Fletcher and the writer Declan Long.

It is the first time the Turner Prize exhibition has ever been held outside England.

Imaginary portraitist up for Turner