The critics will say it is rubbish - and so will its most ardent admirers. The Turner Prize exhibition, that annual celebration of modern British art which has never failed in its duty to be controversial, opens tomorrow.

Some is, not to put too fine a point on it, a heap of old junk. Old typewriters, old road signs, old toys, old computers, even old wheelbarrows. Rubbish, the lot of it. But artistic rubbish.

The piece in question is the creation of Tomoko Takahashi, one of four finalists for the £20,000 prize. She has gathered up a mass of old junk, from broken down photocopiers to long-dead telephones for a work entitled Learning How To Drive. (Ms Takahashi, 33, is, as it happens, currently learning how to drive).

Children's games lie artfully arranged on the floor. Bits of scaffolding hang from the ceiling. There is even a ripped up copy of the Highway Code.

It looks like a junk yard hit by a hurricane, but no one should be surprised to hear there is apparently more to it than that.

Mary Horlock, the curator of the exhibition at Tate Britain, said: "If you look at it very simplistically you can say it is a load of old rubbish. It fundamentally is not. It uses objects that have been discarded, but it's not about objects that have lost their use."

While much of her material comes from skips, many are on loan - street furniture from Lewisham Council, crates and old IT equipment from the Tate itself - and will have to go back when the exhibition is over.

The work, according to Ms Hor-lock, grew out of Ms Takahashi's relationship with the Tate when she was first confronted with an empty gallery she had to fill. The Tate had lots of rules about what she could do - many to do with health and safety - while Ms Takahashi felt rules were there to be broken. The result is Learning How To Drive.

"She felt there was this immediate connection between the different codes and procedures in learning to drive and the different systems and structures within the Tate," said Ms Horlock.

"She questions everything. She would shout, 'It's about free-dom!'"

For a prize which, in the past has guaranteed itself headlines with such tabloid fodder as Tracey Emin's unmade bed and the notorious elephant dung, it would be disappointing if Ms Takahashi's rubbish were the only potential controversy. No one should worry.

There is also plenty of disquiet about the fact that only one of the four finalists is British (the Tate says it is within the rules because all of them work here).

He is Glenn Brown, 34, whose paintings question the whole idea of originality by taking as their starting point works by other artists, such as Salvador Dali and Frank Auerbach.

The other painter in the final - and after last year there were those who wondered if there would ever be another painter in the Turner Prize short list - is Dutch-born Michael Raedecker, 37, whose bleak landscapes and interiors use a distinctive combination of oil and acrylic paint, thread, wool, textiles, even sequins. William Hill have him as 13-8 favourite to win the prize.

The fourth contender is the photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, 31, whose work is described by the Tate as challenging conventional aesthetics, "creating images of meaning and resonance from unlikely subjects and situations - rats scurrying into city sewers; snow melting on a pavement; a friend laughing, lying naked in the sand dunes".

For those seeking an antidote to the Tate's offerings, there is an exhibition entitled The Real Turner Prize Show 2000 at the Pure Gallery, Leonard Street, off City Road.

It is the creation of a movement called the Stuckists, who believe the Turner Prize has become "an ongoing national joke, because of its pathetic and pretentious exhibits".

The only artist who would not be in danger of winning the Turner Prize, they say, is Turner himself. A painting by the movement's cofounder Charles Thomson depicts

Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota examining a pair of red knick-ers and saying: "Is it a genuine Emin (£10,000) - or a worthless fake?" P The Turner Prize 2000 exhibition at Tate Britain runs until 14 January. The prize will be awarded on 28 November.