Turner Prize winners: Where are they now and what have they done since?

It may be the biggest accolade in British art, but winning the Turner Prize isn’t the be all and end all of an artist’s career. In fact, it can be just the beginning.

From 1991 until last year, the prize was restricted to artists under the age of 50, meaning that younger winners were often still to make some of the most defining work of their career.

In the week that we learn who has made the shortlist for the 2019 prize, we decided to take a look at what the Turner Prize winners did next.

From controversial artwork to Oscar winning films, take a look at some of the artists who have continued to make headlines since scooping the prestigious honour.

Anish Kapoor

Since winning the 1991 Turner Prize for an untitled sculptural work, Kapoor has since produced myriad public commissions. These have included the Cloud Gate (or The Bean) in Chicago, a weird and wonderful installation in Tate’s Turbine Hall in 2002, and the ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture for the London 2012 Olympic Park. In 2014, he controversially acquired the exclusive licence for the pigment Vantablack, which is known for being the “blackest black” available.

Rachel Whiteread

​Whiteread made history when she became the first woman to win the prize in 1993 (eight whole years after the prize began) for her extraordinary work House, which consisted of a full cast of the inside of a Hackney home. She has she has ticked off multiple British art accolades from her list, with commissions including a Turbine Hall installation and a sculpture on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Whiteread was recently the subject of a 2017 retrospective at Tate Modern.

Damien Hirst

​Hirst won the Turner Prize in 1995 for Mother and Child Divided, a sculpture which depicted a cow and calf cut in half and suspended in formaldehyde. The win led him to become probably the most famous artist in the UK, and one of the richest, with his controversial work commanding record breaking prices (he sold an entire show at auction in 2008, making £111 million in total.) In 2017, Hirst put on a mysterious show at the Venice Biennale that was 10 years in the making, consisting of an array sculptures which Hirst implied had been dragged from an ancient shipwreck.

Gillian Wearing

In 60 Minutes Silence, Wearing filmed a group of police officers, posed as if for a portrait, for an hour. It won her the Turner Prize in 1997, and since then Wearing has continued to work with ideas of identity and human relationships in her work. The Whitechapel Gallery opened a major survey of her career in 2012, her work was paired with Claude Cahun's in a big National Portrait Gallery show last year, and most recently, Wearing has unveiled her statue of Women’s Suffrage campaigner Millicent Fawcett, the first statue of a woman to stand in Parliament Square.

Chris Ofili

Ofili won the Turner Prize in 1998, becoming the first black artist to do so, for paintings covered in both glitter and elephant dung (yes, really). A year later Ofili faced a lawsuit from New York mayor Rudy Giuliani for exhibiting The Holy Virgin Mary as part of Charles Saatchi’s Sensation exhibition in the city. The black Madonna was displayed in the work surrounded by scenes from Blaxpoitation movies, images of female genitalia and chunks of elephant dung. He was the subject of a retrospective at Tate Britain in 2010, and was awarded a CBE in 2017. Last year he unveiled a new tapestry at the National Gallery entitled The Caged Bird Sings.

Steve McQueen

Video artist Steve McQueen won the 1999 Turner Prize for short film works shown in an exhibition at the ICA, but you might know him for quite a different reason. He's gone on to become better known for his work in the film industry, and as director of award-winning feature film 12 Years A Slave he became the first black filmmaker to earn an Oscar for Best Picture. Prior to this feat, McQueen had also earned acclaim for his films Hunger and Shame, both of which also starred actor Michael Fassbender.

Jeremy Deller

Performance, video and installation artist Deller picked up the 2004 prize for a video work examining the reaction to President Bush in his home state. His eclectic practice has seen him produce a bouncy castle Stonehenge in Glasgow, and a survey of British culture in his 2013 Venice Biennale show English Magic. A 2016 performance work commemorated the 100 year anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, and saw 1600 motionless volunteers stand at King’s Cross station representing individuals who died on the first day of battle. Most recently, he we created leaflets that were handed out in public places telling people how to leave Facebook.

Wolfgang Tillmans

German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans became the first non-British artist to win the Turner Prize in 2000. He won the accolade for work that could be seen in both exhibitions and numerous magazines that year. Tillmans has since continued to work across both graphic media and fine art, and in 2016 he produced a series of free-to-download Anti-Brexit campaign posters which carried slogans including “No man is an island. No country by itself.”

Grayson Perry

Possibly the most recognisable of all the Turner Prize winners is artist Grayson Perry, who has gone on to full blown national treasure status. Upon winning in 2003 for an exhibition of pots decorated with politically charged illustrations, he famously declared, "well, it's about time a transvestite potter won the Turner Prize." Since then, he has penned several books, including a memoir, and hosted several TV documentaries. (In the Channel 4 series Who Are You? he famously created a pot for politician Chris Huhne that was covered in penises.) He gave the Reith Lectures in 2013, discussing populism on contemporary art, and went on to develop them into a book. Last year, he opened an exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries in 2017 called The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! and this year will curate the Royal Academy's annual Summer Exhibition.

Assemble

Assemble aren’t quite like any other Turner Prize winners - firstly, there’s around 20 of them. They are also more likely to call themselves architects than artists, and won their Turner Prize in 2015 for a radical community housing scheme in Liverpool. Since then they have been involved in projects including Art on the Underground in partnership with TfL, and regenerating The Art Academy’s building on Borough High Street, continuing to encourage relationships between the public and their local area. Last year they invited the public into their workshop during London Design Festival.