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Jake & Dinos Chapman
Shortlisted: 2003

The Chapman brothers produce images of distorted reality that defiantly refute straightforward interpretation. They are renowned for exploiting to the full their own aesthetic of obscenity and horror and engaging freely with inflammatory subjects, such as the Holocaust, Nazi symbolism, religious iconography and ethnographic imagery. Yet they comment 'however misanthropic we might appear, it is still in service to a certain critical discourse'. Their work is as much a serious debate and dialogue with art history and theorists such as Georges Bataille as it is aimed at provoking a response.

Jake was born in Cheltenham in 1966 and Dinos was born in 1962. The two have collaborated together since they graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1990. They are shortlisted for the Turner Prize this year for their exhibitions at Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, White Cube, and Modern Art Oxford. In these exhibitions, their striking sculptural installations and graphic works investigate society's taboos with humour and provocation.

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

View Jake Chapman in the Tate Collection
View Dinos Chapman in the Tate Collection