Portrait in elephant dung wins Turner Prize

CHRIS OFILI, who paints with elephant dung, won the pounds 20,000 Turner Prize last night. He was the first painter since Howard Hodgkin in 1985 to win the visual arts' most prestigious award. Recent years have seen the award going to installation and video artists and sculptors.

Ofili, 29, the odds-on favourite,was praised by the jury for "the originality and energy of his painting and his dynamic use of colour". Born in Manchester, he studies at the Royal College of Art. The Turner Prize exhibition contains one of his most topical and powerful paintings, No Woman No Cry, a black woman crying, with every tear containing a picture of the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

It was intended to portray universal grief and suffering, with particular attention to the black community. But as he worked, he became increasingly aware of the Lawrence inquiry and, according to the Tate curator Virginia Button, aware of the image of Doreen Lawrence often in tears, and brought this into his painting.

"Chris followed the coverage of the inquiry and Mrs Lawrence would always be there, weeping, and this is Chris's tribute." The figure, who wears a pendant of elephant dung, was inspired by Mrs Lawrence, although it is not a portrait.

Another of Ofili's works, The Adoration of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars (Part 2), is described in the Tate exhibition catalogue as being made of acrylic, oil, resin, glitter, paper collage, map pins and elephant dung on canvas with two dung supports.

Ofili beat a shortlist of Tacita Dean, 32, Cathy de Monchaux, 37, and Sam Taylor-Wood, 31. Dean's work included a video of Hungarian women in a steam bath; Taylor-Wood used video with a split-screen view of a couple arguing in a restaurant; de Monchaux had wall sculptures of metal, pink leather and suede, and a group of lead structures resembling tombstones.

The jury, chaired by the Tate Gallery director, Nicholas Serota, comprised Ann Gallagher, exhibition officer at the British Council, Fumio Nanjo, curator and critic, Marina Warner, author, and Neil Tennant, member of The Pet Shop Boys and representative of the Patrons of New Art.