VISUAL ART

TESSA FARMER

Tessa Farmer tries to take you back to the secret life of the child. She leads you past the polished surfaces of mundane perception into miniature realms that normally might not have been noticed. Her tiny scenarios of scuttling creatures awaken a childlike curiosity.

You peer through the apertures that she opens in the imagination. But don’t expect to discover some lost Eden. Farmer’s microscopic creatures, intricately crafted from filaments of tree root and fragments of dead insects, are macabre hybrids. They indulge in all sorts of perverse antics. Behind the surfaces of natural beauty lies a savage Boschian world.

Farmer creates a reflection in miniature of our society. She shows us its fragility and its ferocity, its poetry and its repulsion, its beauty and its brutality. The drama lies in the detail of these miniature works.

LITERATURE

RICHARD MILWARD

Milward’s Apples was the most shocking, exhilarating debut novel published in 2007. Throwing open a window on to the murky lives of teenagers growing up on a housing estate in Middlesbrough, it has been decribed as “ Catcher in the Rye meets Arctic Monkeys”. That’s an accurate tag: Milward mixes Holden Caulfield’s anger with Alex Turner’s wit and grit.

Apples is narrated alternately by obsessive-compulsive Adam and wild child Eve, who navigate punch-ups in car parks, pills in nightclub toilets, drunken rape at house parties and hoodies and headaches at school. But this is no misery tour. The optimism of youth leaks through in Milward’s wide-eyed prose, with its “shiny bitter silver” mornings.

Milward, 23, grew up in Middlesbrough. He printed his first book, In Dust, aged 16, himself. At 19 he wrote Apples. Youth often attracts hype, but Milward’s writing can stick up for itself.

How to vote for your favourite nominee

To vote for the winner of the Times/South Bank Show Breakthrough Award, and to see profiles of all ten nominees, go to timesonline.co.uk/ breakthrough. Voters are registered and can vote only once. Voting closes at midnight on Wednesday, January 16. The South Bank Show Awards will be televised on ITV1 on Sunday, February 3.

Tomorrow

Dancer James Forbat and opera singer Lucy Crowe