A Turner Prize first for sound artist

Dexter Dalwood appeared to be an early favourite, while many wished Angela de la Cruz, who had suffered a debilitating stroke five years ago, a deserved comeback triumph (though the artist who makes evocative “sculpture/paintings” of crumpled canvases did win the prestigious £35,000 Paul Hamlyn Award last month). Few, apart from this reviewer, appeared to be backing the Otolith Group. But in the end, it was 45-year-old Glaswegian artist Susan Philipsz, with recordings of three different versions of a traditional Scottish ballad, who bagged the Turner Prize last night.

Philipsz accepted the award amid the noise of protesting students. Art students from the six London colleges of the University of the Arts occupied part of the Duveen Galleries in Tate Britain, where the ceremony was held. Protesting at proposed higher education cuts for art schools, they were separated from the partygoers by flimsy barricades. Philipsz expressed her “heartfelt sympathies” for the protesters in her acceptance speech, though for anyone who wanted to hear her work during the evening, it was more or less drowned out by the chanting.

It’s the first time in its 26-year history that the Turner Prize has been awarded to a sound artist. But Philipsz’s work, in what appeared to me to be the strongest shortlist in years, seemed slight compared to that of the other nominees. Singing variations of "Lowlands" a haunting 16th-century Scottish ballad which tells the tale of a drowned lover, the slightly different versions of the song could originally be heard from the three bridges of the Clyde in central Glasgow during the city’s International Visual Arts Festival. Clearly something has been lost in translation with its current installation in a warm, bare, brightly lit gallery.

Philipsz has a rather lovely, ethereal voice (though hardly outstanding) and her work is easy to like. But for me, though it plays easily on the ears and the emotions (her current Artangel installation in the city of London even had one critic shedding tears), it lacks the necessary traction for an enduring work of art. For all its flaws, a sense of something troubling, provocative and enduring are just the qualities that make the Otolith Group - duo Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar – stand out for me. Many have seen their work as pretentious, their film Otolith III indigestible, but in parts it is stunningly clever, and it is beautifully collaged.

This work unfolds slowly, and it needs time, perhaps a second viewing. It isn’t extraordinary by any means (the artists have clearly been heavily influenced by French avant-garde film-maker Chris Marker – his documentary series The Owl's Legacy can also been seen here - but it lacks Marker’s heartbreaking simplicity and his purity of purpose; and the Otoliths want to show off their cleverness by saying too much all at once). What I would argue, however, is that these are two artists who seem quite capable of producing something extraordinary; and the seeds of that extraordinariness can, indeed, be seen here. I simply cannot say the same for Philipsz.

• Turner Prize 10 at Tate Britain until 3 January, 2011
• Turner Prize 10 reviewed by theartsdesk
• Susan Philipsz Surround Me: Song Cycle for the City of London until 2 January, 2011