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The art works competing for the Turner Prize this year have gone on display at Tate Britain - the nominees are painter Dexter Dalwood, Spanish artist Angela de la Cruz, sound installation artist Susan Philipsz and The Otolith Group - its work explores the moving image, sound and text.

Find out what the media's art critics have to say about the exhibits.

One thing you can say for Tate Britain's exhibition of the four artists shortlisted for this year's Turner Prize: it isn't often that you see the most over-rated and under-rated artists in Great Britain side by side. The relentless promotion of Dexter Dalwood's cack-handed paintings of imaginary landscapes and interiors frankly amazes me.

How felicitous, then, to find a gallery filled with the work of a real artist, the Spanish born Angela de La Cruz, whose work has never, I think, received the recognition it deserves. Until you've seen her work, you will never know how visually powerful a heavy piece of fabric can be.

The Turner Prize is about finding and rewarding brilliance, and it should be able to convince us that someone on the shortlist might turn out to have a touch of genius. Two of this year's list, the Otolith Group and Dalwood are, in my opinion, duds - as far from genius as it is possible to get. Which leaves two worthwhile contenders, Philipsz and de la Cruz (for my money Philipsz is a good early bet if you're after a winner, and may well capture imaginations when the exhibition opens its doors). But two decent artists out of four is not enough.

The verdict? Neither especially good nor especially bad, but moderately mediocre.

The Turner never succeeds in ravishing us visually. It doesn't make us weep in despair either. Things could be worse, but can this really be the best art made in Britain by a man or woman under 50?

What is contemporary art coming to? The answer at the moment is far from clear. This year's Turner Prize feels haunted by a mood of wistful nostalgia. Contributors go back over the past to look for ideas that, like small change that has slipped between sofa cushions, have been lost for a while in the interstices of culture.

But, once they have got hold of them all, they don't seem to add up to very much. By the end of the exhibition, the visitor is left feeling almost as empty as the gallery in which he sits.

This is an underwhelming Turner Prize show. There is plenty of interesting art here, but I am just not sure that the prize is performing its proper function. It is still, after all, intended to promote discussion about "new developments in British art", but other than the Otolith Group's dense, studious installation, none of the artists are doing anything particularly surprising or fresh.