Chris Ofili

Sensationalised by the popular press as the artist who "flung dung", banned from showing his work by the Mayor of New York and by the Director of the National Gallery of Australia, is there more to Chris Ofili than the "Elephant Man" of British Art?

Born in Manchester in 1968, Ofili studied fine art at Chelsea School of Art in London and finished a master's degree in painting at the Royal College of Art in 1993. His work gained universal attention in the Sensation Show of Young British Artists at the Royal Academy in 1996 and he went on to win the Turner Prize, the £20,000 annual award given by the Tate Gallery, in 1998 for his 'inventiveness, exuberance, humour and technical richness in painting'.

There is a strong sense of cultural identity in his paintings with references as diverse as hip hop and gangsta rap, comic book heroes, traditional African art and Catholic icons. His imagery fuses contemporary black urban references with allusions to his African heritage. Although Ofili grew up in Britain, his parents came from Nigeria and, when he won a travel scholarship to Zimbabwe shortly after graduating, his work began to reflect the impact that the experience had on him.

Inspired partly by the cave paintings of the San tribe of Zimbabwe which he saw in Africa, and partly by Aboriginal art, Ofili patterns intricate contours of bright dots around his collaged or painted images, which are encrusted with glitter and map pins, and coated with shiny resin. His concentric circles of dots, geometric designs and symbols suggest ordnance survey maps. More controversially, he also began after this African visit to stick resin coated balls of elephant dung to the surface of his canvases, which are propped against the wall at eye level on balls of dung too.

The stylised rhythmic patterning, the outlined portraits collaged with trashy magazine cut-outs are a kind of visual "sampling" like the hip hop music he loves. Such musical influences are seen in work like She and Blind Popcorn. Recent work revolves around the colours red, black and green (the colours of Marcus Garvey's Pan African flag) for an ongoing series called Freedom One Day shown at the Venice Biennale exhibition where he represented Britain last year. It included new paintings and Ofili's own flag design, called Union Black.

Chris Ofili is less an elephant man than a jumbo talent with street credibility.