TAKE a lump of Blu-Tack, knead it, roll it into a ball, stick it against a wall and, hey presto, you have created a work of art worthy of winning the Turner Prize.

The prestigious annual award, made at the Tate Britain Gallery in London, has once again gone to a controversial winner.

Martin Creed uses everyday materials for his conceptual works, driven, he says, by an urge to create "things".

And among these "things" was this year's winning entry -- a light switching on and off.

This work of art, which we are all able to recreate in part when walking into a dark room, won its artist £20,000.

Even its title -- Work 227 The Lights Going On And Off -- held no imaginative or hidden meaning.

Ask the artist to explain his light-flicking exhibit and he simply says: "I think people can make of it what they like. I don't think it is for me to explain."

But explain it the experts did -- with relish. However, Sarah Evans, Bolton Museum and Art Gallery's education and access officer for art, was not impressed.

"Personally, any conceptual idea like this has to have strong reasoning behind it otherwise it is very difficult for people to understand -- especially when the work is winning its artist £20,000," she said.

"If artists cannot come up with any justification or inspiration behind their work then how can the rest of us understand it?

"Conceptual art is not something I find easy to get to grips with. It is geared to a target audience and can be very elitist, which is something we at the museum and art gallery are trying to combat. Our aim is to open up art to everyone.

"Our recent Lubaina Himid exhibition initially had people looking at the work scratching their heads and saying 'I could do that', but they only began to really appreciate the work when they read about Lubaina's inspiration and reasoning behind it."

Ruth Davies, senior lecturer in art and design at Bolton Institute, was equally unimpressed. She said: "I watched the Turner Prize programme like everyone else and was disappointed with the person who won.

"First of all, the work that Martin Creed presented was really like a re-working of the ideas of 1960s minimalism. He offered nothing new.

"I was also disappointed by the fact that he offered no explanation of his work. It was a great opportunity for the artist to offer an insight.

"We kid ourselves that the public is any the wiser about contemporary art because of soundbites at the end of the 10 o'clock news.

"I do not think that people are getting any closer to understanding what they are being shown. In some ways they are being alienated by a lack of explanation."

However, the experts at London's Tate were undeterred by Creed's lack of thought on his own work, remarking on its "strength, rigour, wit and sensitivity to the site". The Tate communications curator explained it thus: "It's emblematic of mortality.

"What Creed has done is really make minimal art minimal by dematerialising it -- removing it from the hectic, commercialised world of capitalist culture.

"His installation activates the entire space."

Remember, we are talking about an empty gallery space with lights switching on and off every five seconds. At this time of year, my Christmas tree does much the same in my living room -- and in a variety of colours!

As for the display of Blu-Tack -- most teenagers' rooms bear lumps of the stuff, scars left behind by posters put up and later taken down.

Creed, aged, 33, from Wakefield, explained this work by saying he was taken with the idea of using the adhesive, but had produced nothing to actually put up, so decided to let the Blu-Tack speak for itself.

The artist is described as having a "subversive wit". Well, I think you'll agree he most definitely has a sense of humour -- and you can't help but feel that the joke is on us.

Let's face it, had Leonardo di Vinci been alive today he would have been tempted to ditch the Mona Lisa and instead put forward a display of discarded canvases he used trying to create his masterpiece.

Creed is one of a new breed of artists being churned out by our country's most reputable art colleges.

Who could forget Tracey Emin's dirty bedroom or Damien Hirst's production of a sheep's head preserved in formaldehyde.

Yet the experts look at any critical voice with disdain, saying things like 'Surely you understand the significance of a pile of bricks. . ."

So, for fear of being told that you are missing the point, or that you really aren't sharp enough to see what the artist is saying, gallery visitors gather around piles of bricks and stare at dirty bedrooms desperate to show some form of understanding or appreciation.

Surely this is fast becoming a classic case of the Emperor's new clothes.