Now in its fifth year, the prestigious £60,000 prize is one of the highest value contemporary art awards in the country and was presented by Mark Wallinger at the Dairy Art Centre in London on Monday 18 November. The judging panel for this year's Annual Award comprised artist Brian Griffiths, Chief Arts Writer at the Guardian Charlotte Higgins, Director of the Zabludowicz Collection Elizabeth Neilson and Curator at the Whitechapel Art Gallery Kirsty Ogg.

Elizabeth's commission  will explore the archives and collections of the Ashmolean Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum, looking particularly at photographs and documents used historically by curators, anthropologists and archaeologists working in the field, while simultaneously engaging with the social and psychological implications of digital technologies. The final work will feature a single-screen video, which will present and narrate artefacts from the museums’ collections, with a focus on the female figure.

Charlotte Higgins said: ‘When Elizabeth Price presented her project for Oxford it immediately became clear that she was on her way to producing a thrilling artwork that will dig deep into the Ashmolean's and Pitt Rivers's archives and ask some characteristically penetrating questions of the way we think about and record the past. The panel was excited by the intellectual sparks that will be fired by Elizabeth's presence in the museums, and the curatorial research and teaching possibilities that will flow from the work. Price is an artist who is working at the peak of her powers, but is still underrepresented in British institutions. It’s fitting that the museums of the city where she studied and now teaches should be together committed to correcting this. Above all, though, the panel just can’t wait to see what she makes.’

Caroline Douglas, Director of the Contemporary Art Society said: ‘We are thrilled that Elizabeth Price has won this year's Contemporary Art Society Annual Award in conjunction with the Ashmolean Museum, Pitt Rivers and the Ruskin. Her commission will respond directly to the long and rich history of the museums' collections to produce a hugely significant new work - the first-ever moving image work by a living artist to be acquired by the Ashmolean. At £60,000, our award presents an unrivalled opportunity for a regional museum to secure an important new work, and what an achievement for the Ashmolean to acquire a work by a Turner Prize-winning artist who is so passionate about its collection and will respond so uniquely to it.’