Laure Prouvost Pic: Martin McKeown

A Hackney-based artist has won the UK’s prestigious Turner Prize 2013 at the ceremony in Northern Ireland yesterday evening.

Laure Prouvost, a graduate from Goldsmiths, was named ‘a surprise winner’ after she beat high-profile artists Tino Seghal and David Shrigley to win the prize.

Prouvost, 35, is the second winner in a row to be associated with Goldsmiths after former lecturer Elizabeth Price won last year’s prize.

Prouvost won the award for a 30-minute contemporary video installation about her fictional grandfather, currently displayed at the Tate Britain.

The international jury, led by Tate director Penelope Curtis, described Prouvost’s work as “complex” and “a courageous combination of images and objects in a deeply atmospheric environment.”

Prouvost, said to the Guardian shortly after accepting the award: “I wasn’t expecting it at all. I was sure it was not me.”

The artist, who was born in Croix-Lille in France in 1978 and has lived in London for 15 years, added: “Half of me feels British, I’ve been here half my life. My boyfriend is half British and my daughter is both. I feel adopted. It was really this country that let me grow.”

The winning installation was a response to German artist Kurt Schwitters’s Lake District works, commissioned by Grizedale Arts and Tate Britain earlier this year.

Prouvost also won the Max Mara Women’s Art Prize, earlier this year, for her exhibition ‘Farfromwords’ at the Whitechapel Gallery in Tower Hamlets.

The £25,000 prize was presented by Irish actress Saoirse Ronan, best known for her role in the Bafta-winning film ‘Atonement’.

It was the first time the award ceremony took place outside England after Derry, the UK City of Culture for 2013, was chosen to host the event in collaboration with Tate Britain.

Former winners of the prize, set up in 1984 to recognize the work of young artists in the UK, include world famous artists such as Damien Hirst and Tony Cragg.