Turner Prize winner Mark Leckey leaves critics unimpressed

Conceptual artist Mark Lecky, who last night picked up the £25,000 Turner Prize, celebrated his victory by taking a swipe at the type of "shock art" purveyed by his contemporaries. "It's all about Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Banksy," he lamented. "[The press] expect shock and spectacle. There is more to art than that."

However, many critics that felt Birkenhead-born Leckey (pictured right, with Nick Cave, who presented Leckey with the prize) had produced work that was bloodless and a little on the dull side. After asking what the Turner Prize was for "without shocks", the Guardian's art reviewer, Adrian Searle, said: "Leckey's is the work I like least [of the four shortlisted candidates]. I have always found it smug."

Michael Glover, writing in the Independent, was equally unimpressed: "It has been a dismal year for the Turner Prize – and all that can be said for Mark Lecky's piece is that it is the least uninteresting of the lot."

The work Glover alluded to was Felix Gets Broadcast, a film featuring the silent-era animated cartoon Felix the Cat. When asked about Felix, Leckey, 44, became fractious. "I don't care about the cat," he said. "I don't have an obsession with Felix. I'm fascinated by these images and the effect they have on me."

As reported here on Monday, many critics, among them Brian Sewell, found this year's entrants so weak that they called for the prize, which has been going since 1984, to be scrapped.