ABOVE: two works by artists competing for the 2005 Turner Prize: left, detail from Gillian Carnegie’s Fleurs de Huile; right, detail from Darren Almond’s Meantime.

Britain’s biggest, splashiest, most infamous art prize opens the exhibit of its shortlisted artists to the public today. The shortlist for the £40,000 Turner Prize is old news, announced way back in the summer. But for the next three months the public will be able to actually see the works themselves at the Tate Modern. The show runs October 18 to January 22, but the winner will be announced in a live broadcast on Channel 4 on December 5.

Of shortlisted artists Darren Almond, Gillian Carnegie, Jim Lambie, and Simon Starling, Carnegie, the only painter of the bunch, is favoured to win. Some of that speculation seems fueled by the mega-exhibit “The Triumph of Painting,” which lumbers onward at the Saatchi Gallery right now. Charles Saatchi, having patronized many past Turner artists before they hit it big, either has his finger on the pulse of an art world that is coming back around to painting (ludicrously suggesting that it ever went off it), or he is simply a collector of such freakishly grandiose financial means that his every well-publicized move shakes the foundations of art. Either way, “The Triumph of Painting” may augur well for Carnegie’s own triumph in December. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen….

LINK: Reuters > Birds battle buttocks, bike for top art prize