For those of you who are not familiar with this, let me give you a little background. The Turner prize was first awarded in 1984.

According to the Tate Britain Museum, their description reads, "The Turner Prize is a contemporary art award that always provokes debate and is widely recognised as one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe."

That aparently is up for debate.

The Prize is usually held at Tate Britain but this year, to celebrate the Capital of Culture, the Turner Prize 2007 exhibition is being shown at Tate Liverpool. A major retrospective presenting works by all the past winning artists, including Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor and Gilbert & George, will be held at Tate Britain at the same time. Try and get to see both if you can so you can keep up to date with this year’s artists as well as finding out more about the Prize’s illustrious past.

Is this cutting edge? Or cutting it to close to the edge? Almost a quarter of a century of Turner prizewinners went on display on Monday at London's Tate Britain museum.

The Turner enrages traditionalists who argue that it is a travesty of modern art, but the show attracts up to 120,000 visitors a year intrigued to see what all the fuss is about.

In 1995, the "Bad Boy" of British contemporary art Damien Hirst won with a pickled cow. In 2003, transvestite potter Grayson Perry wore a frilly Shirley Temple dress to accept his award. Chris Ofili used elephant dung to adorn his 1998 winning entries.

Pop star Madonna swore live on television when presenting the award in 2001 to Martin Creed, who won with a bare room containing a light that switched on and off. A light switch turning on and off? I guess we all have high art in every room of our house.

But is it art?  although one thing critics can agree on is that the prize deserved full marks for putting contemporary art in the center of public discussion.

"All publicity is good publicity. I give it 10 out of 10 for opening up public debate and 10 out of 10 for exporting the event around the world. Britart is in sparkling health," said art writer Meredith Etherington-Smith.

Reflecting on the art fest habitually derided by mocking tabloid newspapers, ArtReview editor Mark Rappolt said: "It certainly pulls in the crowds and other countries like France and Germany have set up their own versions."

But he sounded a note of caution.

"Where it is going now is an open question. At some point you are going to run out of noteworthy young artists. Some years it can be a struggle," he told Reuters. "But it has definitely helped to popularize art."

Tate Britain director Stephen Deuchar defends the prize, telling Reuters at Monday's press viewing: "We do not deliberately sensationalize. Nothing could be further from the truth.

"We want the artists to be comfortable with media pressure. We have to shield them. But of course the point of the prize was to stimulate debate, so we can't turn around and complain."

I don't personally think that a pickled cow, or a light switch can be offensive per say to anyone, but it begs the question is there no limit? While writing this summary, I came up with some ideas about what I would enter into the exhibit. Let me know what you think.

1. A stuffed dog, wearing a mans jock strap.
2. A blender that is running constantly with nothing in it.
3. A potted money tree that instead of leaves has forclosure notices.
4. A cup full of beach sand that has a cigarette butt in it.
5. A dictionary with blank pages.

I think I am going to stop right there because I am starting to think that I might actually win with number 2.

Here are some images of past entries of the event. Enjoy.