The artist who produced a shaky video of a man walking around a gallery in a bear costume has won the 2007 Turner Prize, Britain’s foremost contemporary art award.

Mark Wallinger, 48, from Chigwell in Essex, has been intriguing visitors to the Turner exhibition at Tate Liverpool with Sleeper, in which, dressed in synthetic fur, he wanders aimlessly around a gallery long after closing time, looking out at passers-by and occasionally disappearing from sight.

Wallinger received the £25,000 cheque last night after being nominated for another work, State Britain, a meticulous re-creation of Brain Haw’s anti-war protest in Parliament Square.

The Tate said that there were parallels between Wallinger and the Berlin gallery, and Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel: “Both artists were interested in transforming spaces.”

The judges chose Wallinger over Mike Nelson, who created a labyrinthine walk-through installation using mirrors to suggest a desert landscape; Zarina Bhimji, who photographed spaces in East Africa, Zanzibar and India; and Nathan Coley, who placed a 6ft plank across a doorway. Previous winners of the controversial prize include Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili and Martin Creed.

Wallinger had been the clear favourite, although his work divided the critics. One reviewer dismissed the 154-minute Sleeper as “terrible”. Another found it “at once comic and obscurely threatening”.

In 1995 the artist lost out to Hirst’s pickled animals with a work that involved him naming a racehorse “A Real Work of Art”. When he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2001, he showed a video of himself as a blind man muttering verses from St John’s Gospel backwards at a Tube station.

The judges — including the broadcaster Miranda Sawyer and the art critic Michael Bracewell, with Christoph Grunenberg, director of Tate Liverpool, as chairman — commended State Britain for “its immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance”, noting that it “combines a bold political statement with art’s ability to articulate fundamental human truths”.

The prize was presented by the actor, director and art collector Dennis Hopper. The prizegiving was held outside London for the first time to mark Liverpool’s role as European Capital of Culture 2008.

For State Britain Wallinger reproduced more than 600 of the original anti-war weather-beaten placards, fading photographs and yellowing newspaper cuttings attacking the Prime Minister and the Chancellor in a 40-metre-long replica that runs along the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain.

Accepting his award the artist launched an attack on the Government’s foreign policy. Referring to Brian Haw’s protest, he said: “He is the last dissenting voice in Britain . . . bring home the troops, give us back our rights and trust the people.”

Mr Haw attended the ceremony, recalling that, when first approached by the artist, he told him to “piss off”. Eventually, he said, he realised that “we shared the same heart”.

Fur play

— Four actors wore the suit of the inquisitive but clumsy Bungle the bear for the ITV programme Rainbow between 1972 and 1982

— The question of why Bungle donned a towel after getting out of the shower, yet walked around in just his fur for the rest of the time, has never been addressed

— The comedian Dom Joly won more than 200 votes contesting the Kensington and Chelsea seat under the name Edward “Teddy” Bear for the Teddy Bear Alliance in the 1997 general election

— Nastassja Kinski played Susie the Bear in the film The Hotel New Hampshire — a woman who thinks she is so ugly that she lives her life almost entirely in a bear costume

— Sherwood the Bear the mascot for Nottingham Forest was replaced by Robin Hood this year

Sources: Times database, Amazon.co.uk

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