Simon Starling

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Simon Starling (born 1967 in Epsom, Surrey) is an English conceptual artist and was the winner of the 2005 Turner Prize.

He attended Glasgow School of Art.

The idea of efficiency is a theme that informs much of his work, including Tabernas Desert Run (2004), featuring a bicycle fuelled by hydrogen and oxygen that he rode 66 kilometres across Spain's Tabernas Desert. The only waste product was water, which he then used to paint a watercolour of a cactus that he had seen on his trip.

Tabernas Desert Run was one of his Turner Prize show exhibits, but the piece which attracted most media attention was titled Shedboatshed, and consisted of a wooden shed, which he had at one time dismantled, converted into a boat (in which he had sailed down the River Rhine) and then turned back into the original shed in Basel, Switzerland.

The Times quoted Charles Thomson, leader of the anti-conceptual art Stuckists: "The Turner should be renamed the B&Q diy prize."^[1] Subsequently two other newspapers took up this idea, buying a shed from B&Q, and turning it into a boat.

As of 2005, Starling lives and works in Berlin and Glasgow.