Voina, art group backed by Banksy, wins Russian prize for erection

Collective whitewashed 65-metre penis on drawbridge in St Petersburg

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• Tom Parfitt in Moscow
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 April 2011 16.20 BST
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A McDonald's worker looks at a cat tossed across the counter in a 2007 performance in Moscow by Voina. Photograph: Thomas Peter /Reuters
Voina, the scatological Russian art collective supported by the British street artist Banksy, has won a state-backed art prize for painting a 65-metre penis on a drawbridge. Members of Voina (the war) – two of whom are awaiting trial on hooliganism charges – whitewashed the decoration on a bridge in St Petersburg last June. When the bridge was raised the erect phallus faced the local headquarters of the FSB, the successor to the KGB. The work, entitled A Dick Held Prisoner at the FSB, was awarded the 400,000 rouble (£8,700) 2010 Innovation prize by the National Centre for Contemporary Arts in Moscow on Thursday evening. The graffito was scrubbed off the bridge by authorities after a few hours but pictures of it became an internet sensation. The prize, which is supported by the ministry of culture, was awarded after weeks of wrangling, during which Voina's entry was excluded, then reinstated. Andrei Yerofeyev, the curator who announced the winner, described the phallus as an outstanding work which stemmed from a Russian tradition of "socially engaging art". No representatives of Voina were at the glitzy ceremony at an art gallery run by Roman Abramovich's partner, Dasha Zhukova. However, the collective issued a statement saying it would donate the prize money to political prisoners. Two members of the group, Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolayev, are awaiting trial in relation to a guerrilla performance in September called Palace Revolution, when the group turned over several police cars in St Petersburg. The pair were arrested in November but released on bail in February. They face up to seven years in jail if convicted. Banksy donated £80,000 from a print sale to Voina after hearing about the prosecution. Vorotnikov suggested that the prize jury had defeated bureaucrats who tried to deny the group the prize. "They are professionals after all, and some of them are brave people," he told the Sol website. Other members of Voina said it should have won the prize for a different "action" – when a woman in the group was filmed stealing a chicken from a grocery store by inserting it into her vagina. "Now that was something," said Vorotnikov.