divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/40940?ns=guardianpageName=Art+and+design%3A+The+room+I+cannot+leavech=Art+and+designc3=The+Guardianc4=Turner+prize%2CArt+and+design%2CArt+%28visual+arts+only%29%2CCulture+sectionc5=Art%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Adrian+Searlec7=2008_12_01c8=1126619c9=articlec10=GUc11=Art+and+designc12=Turner+prizec13=c14=h2=GU%2FArt+and+design%2FTurner+prize" width="1" height="1" //divpI am an A-level art student, which means I have a sketchbook, which I am expected to fill with ideas, notes and drawings - drawings of other artists' work as well as my own. But I often find myself writing mini-reviews of everything I stick in it, whether it's a scrap torn from a magazine or a photocopy from a book. Recently, I've started to realise that writing about art is just as much fun as actually creating it; the two things definitely inform each other. /ppI am lucky enough to be part of what I think of as the Tate Modern Generation - teenagers who have, for a good eight years, been able to see modern and new art at a cost of nothing. I don't live in London, but I love the Turbine Hall commissions, the large permanent collection, the cool, minimalist interior. Not everyone feels the same way, of course - plenty of my friends don't - but I'm pretty sure it's inspiring a future generation of artists and designers. My favourite painting there is Meryon by Franz Kline: what looks like a few spontaneous brushstrokes is actually the result of rigorous reworking; it's hard to comprehend how you can make something so beautiful using only two colours. /ppA couple of weeks ago, I went to see the Turner prize exhibition at Tate Britain with the Guardian's art critic, Adrian Searle. Predictably, Charles Thomson of the Stuckists had already written it off, saying: "The work is not of sufficient quality in terms of accomplishment, innovation or originality of thought to warrant exhibition in a national museum." Adrian proved a much better guide./ppFirst, we looked at Goshka Macuga's work, which confronts you as soon as you step inside. Her sculptural pieces look like bike racks and handrails, and wouldn't be out of place at a German airport. Adrian told me they were, in fact, commissioned for this year's Berlin Biennial, and made from designs by Lilly Reich, the German modernist and lover of architect Mies van der Rohe. Collages of work by Paul Nash and Eileen Agar adorn the walls, walls that have been gently licked by elegant strokes of grey; this suits the sharp lines and precise shapes of the sculptures. /ppIn the next room, Cathy Wilkes had installed I Give You All My Money, a scene featuring toilets, mannequins wearing horseshoes, and half-eaten bowls of porridge sat on supermarket conveyor belts. It's not exactly Sainsbury's on a Sunday morning. Adrian and I agreed this was a very difficult piece. All the ephemera around it made it even more puzzling: the abandoned pram, the glass bowls with baby spoons suggesting motherhood; the batteries inserted into jars of Bonne Maman jam, perhaps pointing to an idea of the strength of the family unit. There was something mundane about it all: you go to the shop, you buy the food, you feed it to your child, you leave the washing up. /ppRuna Islam's work here is all film-based. I don't really know much about video art, but Adrian told me about some of the techniques artists use - the importance of the speed and direction in which a camera moves; the way background colour can influence the way you perceive a video, in the same way as a painting or photograph. In Islam's wonderful film, Be the First to See What You See As You See It, a woman wanders around a gallery pushing tea sets slowly to the floor; the green walls recall a Good Housekeeping magazine from decades ago. (It might just be the fact that they both use tea cups and small containers in their work, but for me there were echoes of Wilkes' installation here.) Islam made me want to go away and experiment, to buy a vintage Super 8 camera and a whirring projector./ppMark Leckey, the only man on this year's list, has produced a lot of work, and a lot of ideas. There is a small model of his studio, a short film featuring Jeff Koons's 1986 sculpture Rabbit, and a series of slides showing a circular mirror and some kind of stuffed animal. A strobe light flickered underneath the carousel slide projector to simulate the effect of a film; Adrian pointed out the tiny light mounted on the plinth./ppWho would I like to win tonight? Macuga: her work was the most varied, and I liked the way it interacted with the gallery environment. Looking at the Turner exhibition with Adrian is something I will remember for the rest of my life. What did I learn? That you can home in on the minutest of details - a rosebud, a panning shot - and then build towards an overall understanding of a work; that amazing art doesn't need to be a painting or a sculpture - it can be an installation or a video. I also know that art has become a perpetual passion - a book I can't put down and a room I can't leave./pp· See the other shortlisted young critics at a href="http://guardian.co.uk/youngcritics"guardian.co.uk/youngcritics/a/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/turnerprize"Turner prize/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/art"Art/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/t36OI6eV7nI7XjBoYz6WGlO6wiY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/t36OI6eV7nI7XjBoYz6WGlO6wiY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p