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Helen Chadwick
Shortlisted: 1987

Chadwick was one of the first women to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Her work drew on a variety of areas of knowledge such as anatomy, science and myth. From the 1970s she began to use her own body as a means of investigating the subject of human identity. Her photos, sculptures and installations are remarkable for their imaginative and perturbing use of unusual materials including lambs tongue, fur, flowers, meat, urine, chocolate, household cleaning fluids and hair gel.

Of Mutability
Of Mutability 1986
Photocopies and assorted media. Dimensions variable.
The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Musuem
© Courtesy Helen Chadwick Estate/Zelda Cheatle Gallery   Photo: ICA, London

Helen Chadwick was born in Croydon, London in 1953 and died on 5 March 1996. She studied at Brighton Polytechnic until 1976, and graduated from Chelsea School of Art in 1977. Chadwick was shortlisted in 1987 for her impressive use of mixed media demonstrated in her show Of Mutability, held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

This information has been taken from The Turner Prize: Twenty Years, by Virginia Button, Tate Publishing, 2003.

View Helen Chadwick in the Tate Collection