Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- There was little doubt in the immediate media coverage last night as to why Mark Wallinger had won the 2007 Turner Prize for art. He got it, everybody is agreed, for ``State Britain,'' a perfect facsimile of an anti-war protest that was exhibited at Tate Britain earlier this year.

This clarity is unusual. Generally, there is an ambiguity about what the Turner is awarded for. According to the rules, the work or exhibition mentioned on the nomination is all important. But generally the public, media and -- presumably -- the jury also have in mind the piece which is shown in the Tate exhibition that precedes the final decision.

No one remembers whatever it was that Tracey Emin was nominated for in 1999 -- she didn't win -- but everybody can recall the soiled and unmade bed she showed in the exhibition. This time, it's the other way around.

There's little interest in ``Sleeper,'' the work that Wallinger is showing at the Turner Prize Exhibition at Tate Liverpool. This is a film showing the artist, dressed up in a bear costume, wandering around the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin by night.

Wallinger himself confesses -- in a film posted on the Tate Web site -- that at times he was puzzled by the process of thought that had led him into this strange activity.

There are, to be fair, some logical links. A bear is the emblem of Berlin, for example. But the artist's bewilderment as to how he ended up in a grizzly costume, prowling around Mies van der Rohe's masterpiece is understandable -- and probably shared by the public.

Crash Barriers

``State Britain,'' on the other hand, was easy to decode, concerned subjects of passionate political interest and it managed to make some interesting points about art, at least intellectually. Visually, since it is a precise reproduction, of a lot of battered and timeworn posters, placards and crash barriers, it didn't look all that enticing.

The installation at the Tate was a recreation of the pavement picket from which the marathon anti-war demonstrator Brian Haw harangued the Houses of Parliament through a megaphone for year after year from 2001. In May 2006, most of Haw's protest paraphernalia was removed by the police, following the passing of a new law: the ``Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.''

Wallinger put it all back, within 10-minute walk of the House of Commons -- technically, he claimed, Tate Britain is just within the exclusion zone named in the law -- but in the sanctuary of an art gallery. It was a move recalling the way that medieval fugitives sought shelter in church.

So in ``State Britain'' Wallinger made a protest of his own, against curtailment of freedom by a government he described last night on BBC radio as ``paranoid.'' He also made a point about realism.

This is not a work that philistines could complain did not require skill. It must have been quite difficult for Wallinger and his assistants to imitate all those scruffy slogans and beaten up banners so accurately. But it ended up as a faultless, full-scale representation of a mess. That's a paradox Duchamp would have enjoyed.

Wallinger is a worthy winner, though not because of the bear.

The Turner Prize exhibition is at Tate Liverpool through Jan. 13, 2008.

(Martin Gayford is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this story: Martin Gayford at martin@cgayford.freeserve.co.uk.

Last Updated: December 4, 2007 05:34 EST