An artist who honed her skills in a garage in Macclesfield has scooped the country’s most prestigious contemporary art award.

Sculptor Helen Marten, who is hailed as one of the most exciting artists of her generation, was named winner of the Turner Prize on Monday.

It was the second major win inside a month for the former King’s School student, who won the Hepworth Sculpture Prize last month.

Her sculptures feature a large amount of ‘found’ materials including coins, cotton buds, shoe soles and eggs, are used in odd and unexpected ways.

Helen, 31, whose family still live in Macclesfield, was awarded £25,000.

Alex Farquharson, Tate Britain director and the chair of the judges, said Marten used objects in “a similar way to a poet using language”, adding: “The judges were impressed by the complexity of the work, its amazing formal qualities, its disparate materials and techniques and also how it relates to the world... how it often suggests meaning, but those meanings are all in flux somehow. One image, one form becomes another.”

In her acceptance speech Helen said the win was unexpected and paid tribute to her “brilliant and exciting” fellow nominees - nthea Hamilton, Michael Dean and Josephine Pryde.

Helen also offered to share her prize with other nominees, a generous act she also did with the £30,000 Hepworth prize.

The prize, named after innovative British painter JMW Turner, is awarded to artists under 50 who are judged to have put on the best exhibition of the year. Previous winners include Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin.

Debbie Inman, Helen’s former A-level art teacher and now Head of Art said: “Helen’s talent was clearly evident even as a young artist. She was technically very able, and her drawing and painting skills were outstanding, creating some beautiful portrait work in particular, but it was the strength of her ideas that set her apart.

“Helen’s current success comes as no surprise as her capacity for original, intelligent, quirky thought, expressed through her art, coupled with her tremendous technical ability meant she was always destined for something big. Helen was very modest about her talents.

Helen grew up in Macclesfield and went to King’s until 2004 when she moved to London to study art at Ruskin School of Art and Central Saint Martins.