An award-winning young artist has been told that her appearance in the Big Brother house can qualify for the Turner Prize as a study in endurance.

Amy Jackson, a conceptual artist from Leeds, is a contestant in Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack, a revamped version of the Channel 4 programme, featuring gifted housemates aged 21 and under.

Ms Jackson, 21, who is studying fine art at Ruskin College, Oxford, works with installations and photography and won the Geoffrey Rhodes Prize for the highest first-year exam results.

She is joined in the house by aspiring politicians, entrepreneurs, fashion designers, Olympians and musicians. Celebrities, including the Little Britain comedian Matt Lucas, have taken over the role of Big Brother, setting tasks for the housemates.

Ms Jackson wants her participation to qualify in its own right for the art world’s foremost prize. “Being in the house has a lot of scope for being an endurance art piece,” she said. “Somebody’s experience in Big Brother could win the next Turner Prize.”

Ms Jackson wants to work on her latest project, Clean Removal, while in the house. She takes items of household waste, cleans them thoroughly and mounts them under glass with the label Removed For Cleaning.

On one occasion, she found a used condom while visiting a friend and took it for cleaning.

“On first impressions, people find me fairly irritating,” admitted Ms Jackson, who has won a prize for an installation in the Oxford University Press bookshop.

A spokeswoman for the Turner Prize agreed that appearing in Big Brother could meet the criteria. “It would not be the first occasion an artist has incorporated reality television in a shortlisted entry,” she said.

In 2006, Phil Collins was shortlisted for Shady Lane Productions, a “fully functioning office” with a real-life receptionist and researchers who sought to trace people who have been scarred by their “15 minutes of fame” on television reality and talk shows. The “staff” were present from Monday to Friday during the exhibition.

However, Ms Jackson cannot enter her appearance herself. She must hope that the Turner judges invite her to submit a body of work. “Craft, skill, ideas, originality” are the loose guidelines for judging conceptual entries.

The winner of Big Brother Hijack will get £50,000, double the size of the cheque handed to Mark Wallinger, 48, the winner of the 2007 Turner Prize, who filmed himself walking around a gallery dressed in a bear outfit.

Jake and Dinos Chapman, the controversial pair shortlisted for the prize in 2003, will help Ms Jackson to develop her work. Famed for their use of dismembered dolls, the Chapman brothers will also take a turn as Big Brother, setting art tasks.

Channel 4 hopes that the Hijack series, which is being shown on the E4 youth channel, will revive the Big Brother brand after last year’s Celebrity series became embroiled in a row over racist bullying.

An early star among the housemates is John Loughton, 20, from Edinburgh, the chairman of the Scottish Youth Parliament, who hopes to politicise the housemates. The launch show was watched by 3.2 million viewers on Thursday night.

Channel 4 will also give talented photographers a shot at fame in a new series, Picture This, which is to be aired tomorrow. Six unknowns will be set assignments by experts and compete to win an exhibition at the Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art.

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