The Turner Prize is setup and Malcolm Morley wins the first prize despite living in the US.

Howard Hodgkin wins to widespread approval.

‘Living-sculptures’ Gilbert & George become joint winners.

The scale of the exhibition is increased, and the rules change to an ‘outstanding’ contribution to art in Britain, making it clear the Prize isn’t automatically awarded to the greatest living artist. Richard Deacon wins this year.

Tate’s new director, Nicholas Serota, brings a re-think of the Prize’s terms and conditions. From now on it would only be given to artists. In previous years curators, critics and administrators could also be nominated. Tony Cragg wins.

Landscape artist Richard Long is awarded the prize.

The bankruptcy of the sponsor forces the prize to be cancelled.

The prize re-launches with double the prize money - now £20,000. The shortlist, and exhibition of work by shortlisted artists, is reinstated and an age limit introduced: now only artists under 50 are eligible, making it clear that the prize was to highlight outstanding recent work, rather than to reward the achievements of a lifetime. Anish Kapoor is this year’s winner.

Sculptor Grenville Davey wins.

Rachel Whiteread is the recipient of the prize which sees a marked increase in the number of visitors coming to see the exhibition.

Antony Gormley wins the prize for a roomful of 40,000 terracotta figures entitled ‘Field for the British Isles’.

Damien Hirst’s cow sculpture Mother and Child, Divided brings an unprecedented number of visitors to the prize, as well as fuelling a tidal wave of tabloid excitement.

Douglas Gordon wins for his video installation.

1997 features the first all-woman shortlist, with Gillian Wearing winning.

The widely reported (but mistaken) belief that winner Chris Ofili painted with elephant dung was a gift to satirists of the prize.

The nomination of Tracy Emin makes headline news in the tabloids. Emin’s My Bed hijacks the exhibition, sparking violent critical response and dividing opinion. The eventual winner is Steve McQueen.

Wolfgang Tillmans wins whilst Nicholas Serota defends the decision to include artists not born in Britain. He argues that if the Turner Prize had been around in the 1740s, the Italian painter Canaletto, who worked in London, would surely have been on the shortlist.

In 2001 the piece exhibited by the eventual winner Martin Creed ‘The lights going on and off’, is widely ridiculed in the press.

Fiona Banner’s hand-written ‘wordscape’ describing a pornographic film inevitably draws attention but the public’s choice Keith Tyson wins out in the end.

2003 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Turner Prize. The Chapman Brothers, considered favourites to win with sculptures of sexually explicit blow-up dolls, trigger controversy. However, Grayson Perry’s disturbingly beautiful pottery eventually wins.

The shortlist reflects the tense international climate since the Iraq war with Jeremy Deller winning.

Simon Starling wins for ShedBoatShed in which he deconstructed and reconstructed a shed and sailed it down the Rhine.

Tomma Abts’s rigorous paintings clinch the prize.

Mark Wallinger wins for ‘State Britain’ his controversial and exacting replication of banners and paraphernalia from Brian Haw’s protest in Parliament Square.

The Turner Prize is a contemporary art award that was set up in 1984 to celebrate new developments in contemporary art. It is awarded to an artist under fifty, born, living or working in Britain, for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation in the twelve months before 6 May 2008.

Four artists are shortlisted and they present works in a show before the winner is announced in December. The artists are not judged on their show at Tate – the decision is based on the work they were nominated for.

The founders of the Prize, the Tate Gallery’s Patrons of New Art, chose to name it after JMW Turner partly because he’d wanted to establish a prize for young artists in his own lifetime, and because, despite being controversial in his own day, he was now seen as one of the greatest British artists.

The four shortlisted artists, and the winner of the prize, are chosen by a jury which changes every year. It usually consists of a writer or critic, a curator or gallery director working in Britain and a curator or gallery director working outside Britain.

The members of the Turner Prize 2008 jury are Architect David Adjaye, director Frankfurt’s Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste; Daniel Birnbaum, Deputy Director of Modern Art Oxford; Suzanne Cotter, Editor of Frieze magazine Jennifer Higgie and director of Tate Britain, Stephen Deuchar.

The public is invited to nominate artists but the final decision is made by the jury. The jury considers the public nominations when choosing the shortlist, but reserves the right to consider other artists.

This year Tate has provided the prize money.

The exhibition lets the public see and discuss the work of the shortlisted artists. The artists aren’t judged on the work they show in the exhibition.

The artists can choose to show any recent work in this exhibition and where possible the work is representative of the exhibitions or presentations for which they have been nominated. They make their selection in collaboration with curators from Tate Britain. This year’s curators are Carolyn Kerr, Helen Little and Sophie O’Brien.

The prize is not intended to honour an artist’s lifetime achievements. The aim is to celebrate younger talent and to focus attention on new developments in the visual arts.

The jury meets to decide the winner on Monday 1 December. The prize is awarded that evening in a ceremony broadcast live on Channel 4.

Tate Britain is open daily, 10.00–17.50 and open until 22.00 on the first Friday of each month for Late at Tate Britain. Entry is free except for major exhibitions.

Tickets £7 (£6 Senior Citizens, £5 Concessions).

Free for Tate Members.

Book online with Tate or call 0845 600 1354, or buy tickets in person at the gallery. Advance booking is recommended.

For group visits call 0151 702 7400.

Free entry for Members, Patrons and individual children under twelve when accompanied by an adult. Find out more about Tate Membership and buy online now. The exhibition catalogue is available for a special exhibition price of £19.99, saving £5 off the usual retail price.

The Tate Britain Café offers a wide range of freshly baked pastries, high quality sandwiches and salads, light meals, soup, cakes and drinks. Alternatively, the Rex Whistler Restaurant at Tate Britain is home to one of the most original restaurants in London bringing together a great modern British menu, award wining wine list and a spectacular mural.

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