Turner Prize 2012

Elizabeth Price, still from The Woolworths Choir of 1979, 2012

The 2012 Turner Prize exhibition has opened at Tate Britain. The exhibition will continue until 6 January, and the winner will be announced on 3 December in a live broadcast on Channel 4.
The shortlisted artists are: Luke Fowler, Paul Noble, Elizabeth Price and Spartacus Chetwynd. Examples of their work appear below, together with brief statements citing the reasons for their nomination (quoted from the Tate website).
Read reviews of the exhibition by Adrian Searle, Laura Cumming and Richard Dorment; watch a video commentary on the exhibition by Adrian Searle.
Luke Fowler
Nominated for his solo exhibition at Inverleith House, Edinburgh, which showcased his new film exploring the life and work of Scottish psychiatrist, R.D. Laing. Fowler interweaves found footage and new material into accomplished and immersive films that evoke the atmosphere of a particular era, revealing how the relationship between individuals and society changes through time.

Luke Fowler, stills from All Divided Selves, 2011

Paul Noble
Nominated for his solo exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, London, which brought together the painstakingly detailed and engrossing drawings of the fictional metropolis Nobson Newtown. Undercutting the precise, technical drawing is a dark satirical narrative which unfolds in the micro-cosmos of these monumental works. 

Paul Noble, from top, Public Toilet, 1999, Volume 3, 2006-7, Small Three (Noir et Blanc), 2011

Elizabeth Price
Nominated for her solo exhibition at BALTIC, Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, in which she presented a trilogy of video installations. Price reanimates existing archives of imagery, texts and music to explore our complex relationship to objects and consumer culture. Her carefully sequenced films guide us through immersive virtual spaces, derived from the cultural debris of the material world. 

Elizabeth Price, stills from The Woolworths Choir of 1979, 2012

Spartacus Chetwynd
Nominated for her solo exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ, London. Combining a broad spectrum of historical and cultural sources, Chetwynd makes paintings, carnivalesque performances and sculptural installations utilising handmade costumes and sets. Chetwynd confuses the boundary between performer and spectator, creating an atmosphere of joyful improvisation.

Spartacus Chetwynd, Odd Man Out, 2011

Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s - The Barbican

Graciela Iturbide, Our Lady of the Iguanas, Juchitan, Mexico, 1979 (a Zapotec woman wearing live iguanas)

Everything Was Moving: Photography of the 60s and 70s is at the Barbican Art Gallery until 13 January 2013.
The exhibition features the work of 12 photographers working in the period: Larry Burrows, Ernest Cole, Bruce Davidson, WilliamEggleston, David Goldblatt, Graciela Iturbide, Boris Mikhailov, SigmarPolke, Malick Sidibé, Raghubir Singh, Shomei Tomatsu and Li Zhensheng.
This was a politically dramatic (apartheid, Vietnam, Mao's cultural revolution, civil rights protest) and culturally rich period. The photographers featured are an international mix of perspectives and approaches. So diverse is the content that Adrian Searle suggests, in his review, that it might best be approached as a series of solo exhibitions. 
Read reviews by Adrian Searle and Sean O'Hagan and article at the Royal Photographic Society.

Larry Burrows, US soldier during Operation Pegasus, Khe Sanh, Vietnam, April 1968

Add captionErnest Cole, handcuffed black South Africans, arrested for being in a white area illegally; from his book House of Bondage, featuring mostly clandestine shots of the effects of apartheid

Bruce Davidson, City, 1962

William Eggleston,  from William Eggleston’s Guide, 1976

David Goldblatt, Saturday Morning at The Hypermarket: Semi-final of the Miss Lovely Legs Competition, Bocksburg, 28 June 1980

Boris Mikhailov, from Yesterday's Sandwich's series

Sigmar Polke's The Bear Fight, 1974, in which Afghanis enjoy a bear-baiting

Malick Sidibé, Studio Portrait, 1969

Raghubir Singh, Pilgrim and Ambassador Car, northern India, 1977

Shomei Tomatsu, Coca-cola, Tokyo, 1969

Li Zhensheng, several hundred thousand Red Guards at a 'Learning and Applying Mao Zedong Thought' rally in Red Guard Square (formerly People's Stadium), Harbin, Heilongjiang province, 1966