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Lubaina Himid has become the oldest winner of the Turner Prize, and the first black woman to pick up the art award.

The 63-year-old Zanzibar-born, Preston-based artist won the £25,000 prize for work addressing racial politics and the legacy of slavery.

The judges praised her “uncompromising tackling of issues including colonial history and how racism persists today”.

She was named the winner at a ceremony in Hull, currently UK City of Culture.

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Who is Lubaina Himid?

Described in February by the Daily Telegraph as “the under-appreciated hero of black British art”, Himid made her name in the 1980s as one of the leaders of the British black arts movement – both painting and curating exhibitions of similarly overlooked artists.

But she has now got the recognition she deserves. Her section of the Turner Prize exhibition in Hull contains work from the 1980s to today, including wooden figures, pottery and newspapers that she has painted on.

The centrepiece is 1987’s A Fashionable Marriage, based on William Hogarth’s Marriage A-la Mode, which features a cast of cut-out characters including a flirting Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

There are also porcelain dinner sets, found in junk shops. Himid has painted images of black slaves on some and aristocrats – some of whom are vomiting at the news of the abolition of slavery – on others.

She has also painted over parts of newspaper pages to show how they “used black people in a very subtle way which could be said to undermine their identity.”

She is professor of contemporary art at the University of Central Lancashire and was made an MBE in 2010 for services to black women’s art.

What the judges said

The Turner Prize panel said they admired Himid’s “expansive and exuberant approach to painting which combines satire and a sense of theatre”.

They also said they “acknowledged her role as an influential curator and educator who continues to speak urgently to the moment”.

Himid said she was “thrilled” to win, and thanked a list of long-time supporters in her acceptance speech.

She said: “To the art and cultural historians who cared enough to write essays about my work for decades – thank you, you gave me sustenance in the wilderness years.”

Analysis by Will Gompertz, BBC arts editor

Lubaina Himid’s Turner win is being put down to the well-documented rule change that did away with its 50-or-younger age restriction, which had been in place since 1991.

Clearly, the 63-year-old artist wouldn’t – couldn’t – have won without the removal of the age cap. But there was another, less publicised rule change this year that also benefited her.

For the first time the jurors were allowed to take into account the work each artist displayed in the Turner Prize exhibition.

“What?” you may ask. “Hasn’t that always been the case? Why wouldn’t they take the exhibition the public see – and therefore judge by – into account?”

Goodness knows why, but they didn’t. Which might help explain some of the previous winners, and certainly makes sense of Himid receiving the contemporary art award for an exhibition packed with work she made some time ago.

Her tableau A Fashionable Marriage, a satirical and political 1980s take on a scene from Hogarth’s 18th Century series Marriage A-la Mode, was the single best work of art in the entire Turner Prize exhibition.

It would have been a worthy winner when she made it in 1986 and – thanks to the rule change – it was a worthy winner last night.

Speaking to BBC News afterwards, Himid said some of the art establishment was now catching up with her.

“I was overlooked by critics, by press, but I was never overlooked by art historians or curators or other artists,” she said.

She said her win probably wouldn’t change people’s perspectives and attitudes, but added: “I think it will get people talking, which is the point of my work.”

Asked how she would spend the £25,000 cheque, she said: “I spend quite a lot of my money working with other artists, sometimes asking them to make things or helping them to make things when maybe they didn’t get a grant or whatever.

“So I’ll do a bit of that. And I’ll buy some shoes.”

After a change in the rules, this was the first time since 1991 that artists over the age of 50 were eligible for the prize, which used to be infamous for rewarding outrageous YBAs [Young British Artists].

As well as Himid, 52-year-old Birmingham painter Hurvin Anderson made it on to this year’s shortlist.

Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson, who chaired this year’s jury, said there was a desire to celebrate artists who had previously been neglected by the mainstream.

And there was a very international feel to the shortlist, which also included Stuttgart-born Andrea Buttner and film-maker Rosalind Nashashibi, who was born in Croydon to Palestinian-Irish parents.

Their work is on show at the Ferens art gallery in Hull until 7 January.

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Note: This story is auto-generated from ‘BBC News’ syndicated feed and has not been edited by Africa Prime News staff.

One of the oldest and most complete skeletons of humankind’s ancestors has been unveiled in South Africa.

A team spent more than 20 years excavating, cleaning and putting together the skeleton of Little Foot.

Its exact age is debated, but South African scientists say the remains are 3.67 million years old.

This would mean Little Foot was alive around 500,000 years before Lucy, the famous skeleton of an ancient human relative found in Ethiopia.

Both Little Foot and Lucy belong to the same genus – Australopithecus – but they are different species.

Scientists believe this shows humankind’s ancestors were spread across a far wider area of Africa than had previously thought. It also suggests there was a diverse number of species.

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Little Foot was discovered in the Sterkfontein caves, north-west of South Africa’s main city Johannesburg, by Professor Ron Clarke.

It is thought that she was a young girl who fell down a shaft of one of the caves.

“It might be small, but it might be very important. Because that’s how it started, with one little bone. And it helps us to understand our origins,” Prof Clarke said.

The process of removing the bones from the caves was painstaking, as the fossil had “very fragile bones”, which were “extremely soft” and “buried in a natural concrete-like material”, he added.

“We used very small tools, like needles to excavate it. That’s why it took so long. It was like excavating a fluffy pastry out of concrete,” Prof Clarke said.

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Conflict has forced 1.7 million people to flee their homes in the Democratic Republic of Congo this year, causing “a mega-crisis”, aid agencies say.

This means that for the second consecutive year, DR Congo is worst-affected by conflict displacement in the world, the agencies add.

DR Congo has been hit by years of instability, with rival militias fighting for control of territory.

The conflict has been worsened by the failure to hold elections last year.

“It’s a mega-crisis. The scale of people fleeing violence is off the charts, outpacing Syria, Yemen and Iraq,” the Norwegian Refugee Council’s DR Congo director, Ulrika Blom, said.

In a new report, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said that an average of 5,500 people fled their homes every day this year.

The reasons include new armed conflicts, a rise in existing conflicts and the delay in holding elections, the report said.

Despite there being four million displaced people, as well as more than seven million struggling to feed themselves, international aid has been slow to materialise, Ms Blom said.

“If we fails to step up now, mass hunger will spread and people will die. We are in a race against time,” she warned.

DR Congo is a vast country with immense economic resources, but years of conflict has meant that most people live in poverty and there is little infrastructure.

President Joseph Kabila took power in 2001 following the assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila.

He has won two elections and the constitution bars him from running for a third term.

His critics say the poll has been delayed so that he can remain in office.

Mr Kabila’s government has been battling new conflicts in the last year, including in the central Kasai region where violence broke out after the government refused to recognise a traditional chief.

At least 400 people have been killed in the conflict in the region, which is regarded as an opposition stronghold.

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