The artistic opportunities of carpet fluff

Lynn Barber discusses the unearthly struggle of being a judge for the 2006 Turner Prize:

I did once see Keanu Reeves in Vyner Street admiring an artwork in the Modern Art gallery, a blue, plastic rectangle, I seem to recall, that looked like a Formica offcut and cost 20 grand. Reeves described it as 'almost Kleinian', which is artspeak for blue.

...

I remember coming home from the Baltic in Newcastle and telling my daughter: 'I saw some exciting sculpture made of carpet fluff!' She stared at me. 'What was exciting about it?' 'Well, it was a room with a fitted carpet,' I blathered, 'and the artist had scraped some of the carpet fluff into little piles to look like things.'

I showed her the catalogue entry: 'Tonica Lemos Auad, Brazilian artist born 1968, working in London. Auad's carpet installations begin by the artist's delicate gathering and repositioning of minute strands of fluff, teased patiently from newly laid carpet... Auad sees these works as three-dimensional, site-specific drawings that create a space in which the viewer can enter and engage with the settings.' My daughter sniggered: 'So could you engage by hoovering it up?' Some people are such philistines.

- Observer, 1 October 2006