The four nominees for the Tate Gallery's 2010 Turner Prize were Dexter Dalwood, Angela de la Cruz, Susan Philipsz and The Otolith Group (Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun)

The winner was Susan Philipsz - the first sound artist to be nominated and the first to win. Her winning work was an installation under three bridges in Glasgow in which she sung the traditional Scottish song "Lowlands Away".

The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised art award. Although it represents all media, and painters have also won the prize, it has become associated primarily with conceptual art.

As of 2004, the monetary award was established at £40,000. There have been different sponsors, including Channel 4 television and Gordon's Gin. The prize is awarded by a distinguished celebrity: in 2006 this was Yoko Ono.

It is a controversial event, mainly for the exhibits, such as "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", a shark in formaldehyde by Damien Hirst and "My Bed", a dishevelled bed by Tracey Emin. Controversy has also come from other directions, including a Culture Minister (Kim Howells) criticising exhibits, a guest of honour (Madonna) swearing, a prize judge (Lynn Barber) writing in the press, and a speech by Sir Nicholas Serota (about the purchase of a trustee's work).

Susan Philipsz (born 1965 in Glasgow) is a Scottish artist who won the 2010 Turner Prize. In her youth, she sang with her sisters in a Catholic church choir in Maryhill. She studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee from 1989–1993 and then at the University of Ulster in Belfast in 1993-4. She was a Director of Catalyst Arts in Belfast for several years. Philipsz is represented by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York, Ellen de Bruijne Projects in Amsterdam and Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Berlin. She currently lives and works in Berlin.

Originally a sculptor, she is best known for her sound installations. She records herself singing a cappella versions of songs which are replayed over a public address system in the gallery or other installation.

Her 1998, work "Filter", consisting of versions of songs by Nirvana, Marianne Faithfull, Radiohead and The Velvet Underground, has been played at a bus station and at a Tesco supermarket. Her 1999 work "The Internationale" consists of a solo a cappella version of the revolutionary song. She sings the Irish ballad "The Lass of Aughrim" in her 2000 work "The Dead". In her 2003 work, "Sunset Song", she sings the male and female parts of the 19th-century American folk ballad Banks of the Ohio, with the volume level changing according to light levels. She used a vibraphone for her 2009 piece, "You are not alone", commissioned for the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford. In 2010, she was commissioned by the Glasgow International Festival. Her piece, "Lowlands", was three versions of what she called a 16th-century Scottish lament, Lowlands Away. It was played under three bridges over the River Clyde in Glasgow - George V Bridge, the Caledonian railway bridge, and Glasgow Bridge. "Lowlands", was subsequently exhibited at Tate Britain, winning her the 2010 Turner Prize.

Adrian Searle (born 1951) is the chief art critic of The Guardian newspaper in Britain, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter. He curates art shows and also writes fiction.

He taught at Central St Martins College of Art (1981–94), Chelsea College of Art (1991-6) and Goldsmiths College (1994-6). He has curated shows, such as Unbound: Possibilities in Painting (1994), an international exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. In 2003, he co-curated a Pepe Espaliu retrospective at Reina Sofia, Madrid, and curated Glad That Things Don't Talk at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

He was a painter and exhibited widely, but stopped when he took up his newspaper job. He said, "I was always torn between making art and writing. Writing won." He also writes fiction.

Before joining The Guardian, he wrote for The Independent, Time Out and contributed regularly to Artscribe magazine (1976–92). He now also writes for Frieze art magazine.

On 19 July 2011, Searle received an Honorary degree for Doctor of Art from Nottingham Trent University.

Angela de la Cruz (born 1965) is a Spanish artist. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2010.

De la Cruz was born in La Coruña. She studied philosophy at the University of Santiago de Compostela, before moving to London in 1989, where she studied art at the Chelsea College of Art, Goldsmiths College and Slade School of Art (University College, London). She lives and works in London. She has a daughter, born in 2005 while she was in a coma after suffering a brain haemorrhage.

While studying at the Slade School of Art (University College London), she removed the stretcher of a painted canvas (it is often said that it was accidentally broken, although she may have removed it deliberately). She was inspired by the resulting saggy painting, and she has become best known for paintings which are deliberately broken or distorted. In her words: "One day I took the cross bar out and the painting bent. From that moment on, I looked at the painting as an object." Her work, treating paintings as a three-dimensional object rather than a two-dimensional representation, follows a tradition that includes the spatialism of Lucio Fontana in the 1940s.