Elizabeth Price Wins The Turner Prize 2012

Elizabeth Price has won the Turner Prize 2012.

Price, the former 1980s pop musician won for her “seductive and immersive” video trilogy and became the first video artist to win the £25,000 prize for over a decade.

The announcement was made at the Tate Britain in London and transmitted live on Channel 4, where actor Jude Law had the honour of reading out the result, but not before launching an astonishing attack on the government's "cultural vandalism" over the introduction of the English Baccalaureate, which he said would take "arts, design and music" out of schools.

Her winning piece 'The Woolworths Choir of 1979' is three part video that focuses first on the make up and history of churches, before moving on to footage of the 1960s band the Shangri-Las then ending with news footage covering the 1979 fire in a Manchester Woolworths that killed 10 people.

She said: "I can't remember what I thought about it as a child other than it made a significant impression."

Price also criticised the Government and praised her education at a comprehensive school, Putteridge High School, in Luton.

She said: "It's incredibly depressing listening to the comments people made earlier that a young girl from Luton going to a comprehensive might not be able to imagine being an artist and might not have the opportunities I've had."

Price, who started out as a singer with 1980s indie pop band Talulah Gosh, said her career would be "unimaginable" without public support for the arts.

She said she wanted her art to recreate the excitement she felt going to gigs, but admitted: "I gave up doing pop music because I hated being on stage and was very shy."

Price was one of four artists shortlisted for the prestigious prize, including fellow film-maker Luke Fowler, performance artist Spartacus Chetwynd and Paul Noble, who produced a series of detailed drawings of fictional city Nobson Newtown.

Bradford-born Price, who grew up in Luton before studying in London, joins previous winners including Anish Kapoor, Damien Hirst and Grayson Perry.

The Turner Prize sees £25,000 go to the winner and £5,000 each for the other shortlisted artists.

She said she was currently working as an artist in residence at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot.

She told reporters her next work involved "looking particularly at thermal and photographic images of the sun" but admitted she did not know what she was going to do with them.

Huffington Post UK said of Price's entry in our review:

"Price takes over a year to make each of her films, and it shows. In particular her 20 minute piece inspired by a fire in a branch of Woolworths in 1979 - in which 10 people died - is beautifully produced short that is the highlight of this year's show.

Set in three distinct parts, In Woolworths Choir of 1979 opens with an examination of the structure of a chapel using photographs, filmed footage and modern graphics. Passing through a middle section featuring music by 60s girl band Shangri-Las, it ends vividly documenting the fire using archive material. It sounds like it should be incoherent, but the strands are woven together by a number of motifs and metaphors.

So much to think about is crammed inside such a short space of time, yet overall, the piece flows almost like a modern music video, using text and sound effects to narrate the story . It's highly technically accomplished, but with a poetic touch. I hope it wins the top prize in December - it certainly deserves to."