BEING shortlisted for the Turner Prize meant “a blend of excitement and dread”, confessed Martin Boyce at yesterday’s media preview at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.

Dread? “Yes, because of you lot,” said the Scottish artist, up for contemporary art’s big prize along with Karla Black, Hilary Lloyd and George Shaw.

It can’t be denied that the Turner Prize, in the past, has provoked a media feeding frenzy, with some choice headlines.

But in the past, shortlisted artists have exhibited unmade beds, pickled cattle and flashing lights.

An element of Martin Boyce’s installation is a wastepaper bin which arguably makes him a hostage to fortune.

But he said he was interested in public spaces. “The bin is an object that just lets you know you are in a public space.”

The leaves scattered on the ground, on closer inspection, were not real leaves at all but had been cut from crepe paper.

Laurence Sillars, chief curator at Baltic, said: “It’s disappointing that the first question with the Turner Prize is often: ‘Where is the shock?’

“But you could say that art has changed and audiences have changed. There aren’t any beds or sharks in this exhibition although there are some materials that will raise an eyebrow – such as Karla Black using soap and bath bombs.

“I think all the artists here have produced work that is incredibly considered. There’s a great preoccupation with materials and making things in a studio.”

He added: “The great strength of this shortlist is how diverse the artists are.”

Martin Boyce explained how he had created a suspended ceiling to give the impression of clouds gathering around the pillars in his allotted space at Baltic, which he saw as representative of trees.

If the pillars hadn’t been there already, he said, he might have had to create them anyway.

Karla Black’s installation, with its riot of crumpled sugar paper, paint-spattered cellophane and coloured powder on the floor, might on first inspection resemble the aftermath of a teenage party.

But the artist, another Scot, said she didn’t regard her finished works as very different from paintings hung on walls or bronze sculptures. All were the culmination of a creative process.

“Sometimes how you are defined as an artist is just to do with where you stop within that process,” she said.