In a shock to rank with any in the 25-year history of the Turner Prize, this year’s nominees all paint, draw or make objects that are recognisably works of art.

The four nominated artists are Enrico David, 43, Roger Hiorns, 34, Lucy Skaer, 34, and Richard Wright, 49. At Tate Britain yesterday the jury described them as a surrealist, an alchemist, a brilliant draughtswoman and the “thinking person’s graffiti artist”.

Among the pieces that helped to earn their nominations are a council flat coated in shimmering blue crystals, an exquisite watercolour of a bombed Hiroshima and various delicate geometric murals.

Publicity-grabbing stunts are refreshingly absent, although David’s solo exhibition at the Museum für Gegen-wartskunst in Basle does include an obscene photo collage based on the children’s television programme In The Night Garden. The jury said, though, that this was not typical of his work. More representative were his striking surrealist paintings that “have something in common with Picasso”.

Hiorns uses unpromising base materials such as liquid detergent, fire and his own semen to create “something wonderful, out of a fairytale”, according to Andrea Schlieker, director of the Folkestone Triennial and one of five Turner Prize jurors. For his most ambitious work yet, Seizure, he poured 75,000 litres of copper sulphate solution into a condemned bedsit in Elephant and Castle, South London, last year and left it for four weeks. He then opened it for the public.

Skaer makes meticulous drawings, sculptures and films. Her recent output includes pieces that reference Leonardo, Hokusai and Brancusi.

Wright paints on walls in a way that reflects the architecture he finds there. Jonathan Jones, a juror and art critic, compared these “spiralling and fascinating” designs to the mathematically complex formal patterns found in Islamic tile art.

The exhibition for last year’s competition, won by Mark Leckey, drew 92,000 visitors but was condemned by critics as being too intellectual. They felt that it lacked the instant impact of Damien Hirst’s pickled shark, Tracey Emin’s unmade bed and other displays that helped to make the Turner Prize a focus for mainstream debate in the 1990s. Jones said: “Last year’s deal of brilliance in contemporary art and we have ended up with a shortlist which dazzles.”

Jones and Schlieker are joined on the jury by Mariella Frostrup, the broadcaster, Charles Esche, the director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and Stephen Deuchar, the director of Tate Britain and chairman of the jury.

Deuchar said that the six-hour discussion that preceded their selection of the shortlist “certainly did not begin with a postmortem on last year”. He said that the role of the prize was “to bridge the gap between the world of contemporary art, which some people say is difficult, impenetrable and closed, and the wider world of public art appreciation and engagement”.

The finalists have until October 7, when the exhibition of their work opens, to make their case to the jurors. The winner of the £25,000 prize will be announced on December 7.

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