Every five years the British Art Show takes the temperature of contemporary art in the UK. “What has changed in the years since 2000 is that British art, like British society, has become international. Though every artist in the 2005 show lives, works, and may have trained here in Britain, they come from the Netherlands, France, Turkey, Serbia, the USA, Italy, Brazil, Pakistan, Uganda, Zambia, Germany, Poland, Canada, Bulgaria and India. That feels absolutely right. London has always been a cosmopolitan city, but over the past five years it has become the centre of the art world.”