Yorkshire-born artist in frame to scoop coveted Turner Prize

Hilary Lloyd, who was born in Halifax, is nominated for the controversial prize, the richest in the arts world, for her solo exhibition held at Raven Row in London.

She will be up against Karla Black, who is currently exhibiting at Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield, Martin Boyce and George Shaw.

A spokesman for the prize said of the exhibition which has won Ms Lloyd’s place in the final four: “It marked a step-change for the artist in terms of the ambition and scale of her project, which investigates the interrelation of moving image, sound and sculptural form in the portrayal of the urban environment.”

Ms Lloyd was born in Halifax in 1964 and graduated from Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic in 1987. Major exhibitions of her work have been held at the Tramway, Glasgow, in Munich, the Venice Biennale and in Berlin.

The Turner Prize is the richest and most controversial in the British art world and attracts global interest.

The winner of the main award receives £25,000 and each runner up £5,000. The prize, established in 1984, is awarded to a British artist under the age of 50 for an outstanding exhibition in the previous 12 months and has long been synonymous with controversy.

In 2001 Wakefield born artist Martin Creed won the prize for his work The Lights Going On and Off, which centred around an empty gallery with a pair of flashing lights. In 1995 the British art world’s enfant terrible, Damien Hirst, won the prize for an exhibition which included Mother and Child, Divided a sculpture comprising a bisected cow and calf.

The exhibition and prize giving ceremony will take place at the BALTIC in Newcastle this year, only the second time it has been presented outside of the capital having been hosted by Tate Liverpool in 2007. This year’s judges panel was chaired by Penelope Curtis, the director of Tate Britain who was previously in charge of Leeds’s Henry Moore Institute.