Turner Prize 2002 artists: Catherine Yass

Yass was born in London in 1963. She graduated with an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London, in 1990. Yass is best known for her photographs, shown in lightboxes, of people and interior spaces. Her experimentation with methods of processing and colour in photography presents an intensified view of reality, evoking psychological states and the subconscious.

For her film Descent, a camera was lowered to the ground from a crane over a construction site at Canary Wharf, London, through thick fog. Yass adds to the perspectival distortions by screening the film upside down. A related sequence of photographs in lightboxes shot from the top of the building site with a stills camera creates a giddying sense of freefall. Buildings disintegrate into abstracted streaks of colour and light as the camera tilts downwards towards the ground. Her new work, Flight, shown here for the first time, was filmed from a remote controlled model helicopter flying around the roof of Broadcasting House, London. By revolving the image, Yass simultaneously captures our desire to fly and fear of falling.