Four artists, three of them women, were nominated Tuesday for this year's Turner Prize, the Tate Britain's controversial prize for contemporary art.

This year's field has the usual kooky entrants, including an artist who incorporates characters from The Simpsons and Felix the Cat into his work and another whose work includes a female mannequin sitting on the toilet.

The main prize of £25,000 ($49,227) will be awarded Dec. 1, after a high-profile exhibit at the Tate Britain in London. British artists under age 50 are eligible for the prize.

This year's finalists are:

  • Mark Leckey, whose solo exhibition Industrial Light & Magic includes cartoon images such as Felix the Cat and Marg Simpson.
  • Cathy Wilkes of Glasgow, who uses shop mannequins in her installations reflecting on how the world sees women.
  • Runa Islam, a Bangladesh-born film artist, whose emotive work Be The First To See What You See As You See It shows a woman dressed in white wandering around a gallery space of fragile porcelain pieces.
  • Goshka Macuga, a Polish-born artist, who does theatrical sculpture installations. Described as a "cultural archeologist" by the Tate, she takes images from other artists and from history and works them into her sculptures.

There have only been three female winners of the Turner Prize since the award was created in 1984.

Last year's jury selected more political work, including the winner Mark Wallinger, who won for recreating the makeshift peace camp of an anti-Iraq war protester outside the Houses of Parliament in London.

There are no painters among this year's nominees — they work in diverse fields of sculpture, video or art installations. Each has six months to select work for the Tate exhibit.

"The general public look to the Turner Prize to introduce them to what is new," said Stephen Deuchar, director of Tate Britain and chairman of the Turner Prize judges.

"It is not about giving good service medals to artists who have been around for a long time; it is about spotting emerging trends that are especially interesting," he told BBC News.