Turner Prize 1988 artists: Alison Wilding

An interest in perceptual and philosophical questions concerning the nature of art underlay the preoccupation with light, territories, boundaries and their embodiment in matter that was evident in such works as Without Casting Light on the Subject (1975; destr.), an installation comprising a chair, table, lights, sheets of slate and glass, and other objects. The arrangement of the work suggested a quasi-scientific investigation of the properties, status and relation of things. From 1978 she was occupied more with the purely material and physical. Untitled (1980; AC Eng), two brass bags placed in a roughly circular wall of zinc, was a pivotal work and mapped out elemental sculptural concerns that she later consolidated, especially an interest in the sensual and textural properties of materials and their location in space and light. Another recurrent feature of her work in this period was a preoccupation with dual forms, as in Nature: Blue and Gold (brass, ash, oil and pigment, 1984; London, Brit. Council).