Work from ashes of 11 September win major art award

AN ARTIST whose work was made from dust collected from the streets of Manhattan in the wake of the terror attacks of 11 September scooped the first award last night of one of the biggest prizes in the arts world.

Xu Bing, who was born in China and lives in New York, was revealed as the winner of Artes Mundi, the Wales International Visual Art Prize, and pocketed 40,000 - an award double that of the Turner Prize.

The competition, which was launched in September and will be a biennial event, was overseen by a panel of international judges and announced at the National Museum and Gallery in Cardiff.

The artist’s new installation, Where Does The Dust Collect Itself? traces an ancient verse in the white dust.

Born in 1955, Xu Bing is a printmaker and installation artist, who has exhibited around the world.

The artist has exhibited at the Venice Biennale of 1993, the Yokohama Triennale of 2002, and has also shown at the V&A, at the Smithsonian Institute, and in Spain, Japan, Australia and South Africa. Using dust collected near Ground Zero, the artist covered the floor with the material, creating a thin layer which was punctuated by a Chinese verse: "As there is nothing from the first, where does the dust collect itself."

Organisers said the new competition was the first international visual art prize of its kind in the UK and one of the largest in the world to be awarded to an individual artist.

The event aims to provoke international debate, communication and exchange between cultures.

A shortlist of ten artists was drawn from 350 nominations from more than 60 countries by curators Declan McGonagle and Fumio Nanjo.

The works are seen as some of the most innovative contemporary art produced in the world today.

Just one British artist was shortlisted, Tim Davies from Swansea, whose new version of his work, Tatters, "questions the hysteria of war".

The other artists competing for the prize were: Janine Antoni, born in 1964 in the Bahamas and living in New York; Tim Davies, born in 1960 and living in Swansea; Jacqueline Fraser, born in 1956 and living in New Zealand; Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, born in Japan in 1968 and living in Vietnam; Lee Bul, born in 1964 and living and working in South Korea; Michal Rovner, born in Israel in 1957 and living in New York and Israel; Berni Searle, born in 1964 and living in Cape Town; Fiona Tan, born in Indonesia in 1966 and living in the Netherlands; and Kara Walker, born in California in 1969 and living in New York.

After winning the competition, Xu Bing said: "If the art work is a really good piece, people are really touched. If it’s bad art you have to explain too much."

He said that he thought his work was something that ordinary people could relate to. Although the fragile work of gathered dust was "peaceful and beautiful" he said, it would be very easy to destroy.

He said the Artes Mundi prize was not only good for Wales, but "the whole world and contemporary art world".

The First Minister of the Welsh Assembly, Rhodri Morgan, said to those gathered at the National Museum and Gallery in Cardiff: "We have some contemporary art which was not shock or shlock.

"It was first-rate, knock-you-out stuff."