Turner Prize 2016: Bare buttocks and a model train dominate sculpture-heavy shortlist

This year's overall winner will be announced in December

Anthea Hamilton is shortlisted for her Lichen! Libido! Chastity! exhibition featuring this stand-out installation (Tate)

This year’s Turner Prize shortlist has gone bottoms-up, with Anthea Hamilton’s eighteen-foot sculpture of a man grabbing his bare buttocks bagging a spot on the shortlist.

Organisers have revealed that Michael Dean, Helen Marten and Josephine Pryde are also in the final running for the coveted prize celebrating the best in British contemporary art.

Newcastle sculptor Dean makes innovative use of industrial materials like corrugated metal and steel bars, while the Tate describes Marten’s tricky-to-interpret art as “slippery and elusive in both form and meaning”.

Pryde, from Northumberland, is shortlisted for her San Francisco show, lapses in Thinking By the person i Am, in which visitors were invited to ride a model train around the exhibition as they admired her photography.

The reasoning behind this year’s shortlist is yet to be outlined by the jury, but further details can be expected later on Thursday.

Last year’s Turner Prize was won by London architecture collective Assemble for their Granby Four Streets community project. Past winners include Damien Hirst, Martin Creed and Gilbert & George.

The 2016 winner will be announced at the Tate in December. The grand prize is £25,000 with each of the other shortlisted artists taking home £5,000.

Here is a little more about each of this year’s nominees:

Anthea Hamilton

(Tate (Tate)

Hamilton explores a range of scales and mediums from sculpture to performance art, often drawing on the comic, sexual and surreal. She is shortlisted for Anthea Hamilton: Lichen! Libido! Chastity! at SculptureCentre, New York.

Michael Dean

(Tate (Tate)

Dean works mainly in sculpture, focusing on the “phsyical presentation of language”. The everyday urban environment strongly features and he makes use of unexpected materials widely considered to be ugly. He is shortlisted for two exhbitions: Sic Glyphs at South London Gallery and Qualities of Violence at de APpel arts centre, Amsterdam.

Helen Marten

(Tate (Tate)

Marten finds inspiration in an eclectic range of objects. Her work is hard to interpret or classify, making it all the more intriguing. She is shortlisted for a variety of projects including Eucalyptus Let Us In at Green Naftali, New York.

Josephine Pryde

(Tate (Tate)

Pryde is enthralled by the relationship between art and photography, focusing on the idea of art as a commodity and questining the traditions of the art world. She is shortlisted for lapses in Thinking By the person i Am at CCA Wattis, San Francisco.