The 2019 Turner Prize — considered to be the art world's equivalent of the Booker — has been given to all four finalists for the first time in its history.

Key points: The prize has been running since 1984 and been awarded to groups previously

The prize has been running since 1984 and been awarded to groups previously This year judges unanimously agreed to give the award to all four finalists

This year judges unanimously agreed to give the award to all four finalists Throughout its history, the Turner has sparked debates about the value of contemporary art

All four of the artists chosen as finalists won this year's award after they wrote to the jury and asked to be treated as a collective, prize organisers said during a ceremony at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate, south-east England.

Artists Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani said that, at a time when the world is divided, they wanted "to make a collective statement in the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity — in art as in society".

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Jury president Alex Farquharson said award judges agreed unanimously to the request.

Mr Farquharson, director of London's Tate Britain gallery — sibling to the city's better-known gallery, the Tate Modern — said the four artists had not met before they were shortlisted for the prize earlier this year, but had since "formed a real creative and ethical bond".

"It's not four winners. It's one winner, and it's the four of them as a collective," he said.

However, the move has not exactly been met with the same kind of unanimity from observers in the art world.

Andrew Russeth, executive editor of American magazine ARTnews, dismissed the collective win as a "participation trophy".

"Back in my day, artists would kill for the Turner Prize. Literally kill! They'd lie, cheat, and steal," he wrote on Twitter.

"Now it's just a bunch of millennial artists asking for a participation trophy!"

All four of the artists explore political terrain.

Cammock delved into the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, Shani created a feminist science fiction world, Murillo was influenced by the history of his native Colombia and Hamdan interviewed former inmates of a notorious Syrian prison for a sound installation.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 58 seconds 58 s Fiona Parry, senior curator at Turner Contemporary, walks through the prize's exhibited works.

Usually the Turner Prize winner receives 25,000 pounds ($47,537) and the runners-up $7,318.

This year the four artists can divide the total prize pot however they wish.

Named for 19th-century landscape painter JMW Turner, the award was founded in 1984 and has helped bring artists, collectives and mediums to broader audiences.

Previous winners have included individual artists such as Damien Hirst — whose winning 1995 work included glass-walled tanks containing the bisected halves of a cow and calf — to collectives such as London's Assemble, a collection of artists, designers and architects who were awarded for their regeneration of Liverpool public housing in 2015.

In the 1990s, Hirst made a series of installations with animals preserved in formaldehyde in glass boxes. ( Reuters: Dylan Martinez )

The Turner Prize has also been the site of contemporary art folklore, with finalist Tracey Emin's work 'My Bed' — an installation featuring a bed, used condoms and underwear — having been mistakenly tidied up by gallery attendants during its exhibition in 1999.

My Bed was first exhibited in 1998 and it has since been shown around the world. ( © Tracey Emin, 2011 )

But it has also been criticized for rewarding impenetrable conceptual work and often sparks debate about the value of contemporary art.

The surprise Turner result follows a contentious decision by jurors of this year's Booker Prize for fiction to split the award between two writers, Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo.

The move was criticised in the publishing industry as some felt it watered down the impact of the award.

Mr Farquharson said the Turner Prize had "broken the mould" before, with recent winners and nominees including architects and human rights researchers.

He said innovating had "kept the Turner Prize dynamic and surprising and not ossified".

"I don't think it would have had that long history had it not evolved, had it not surprised us," he said.

ABC/AP