Ann Gallagher, Exhibition Officer at the British Council was one of the jurists for the Turner Prize exhibition of 1998, held at Tate Britain, 28 October 1998 - 10 January 1999. Along with Chris Ofili, Sam Taylor-Wood, and Cathy de Monchaux, Tacita Dean was shortlisted for the Turner Prize 1998. The jury consisted of Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate, and Chairman of the Jury, Gallagher; Fumio Nanjo, Curator and critic; Neil Tennant, Representative of the Patrons of New Art; and Marina Warner, Author and critic. The award was, in due course, made to Ofili, “for the inventiveness, exuberance, humour and technical richness of his painting, with its breadth of cultural reference, as revealed in his solo exhibition at Southampton City Art Gallery and in Sensation at the Royal Academy, London.” Ofili was the first Black British artist to win the Turner Prize.
Dean was shortlisted for “her solo exhibition at the Frith Street Gallery and other presentations of her work in the UK and Europe, in which she demonstrated her versatility in the use of a wide range of media, including drawing and film, to create imaginative narratives of her chosen themes.” de Monchaux was shortlisted “for the growing complexity and richness of her sculpture and for her sensuous use of materials as displayed in her solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and her striking contribution to Wounds at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.” Taylor-Wood was shortlisted “for her prize-winning presentation at the Venice Biennale and her solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle, Zurich, and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, in which her acutely perceptive explorations of human relationships through photography and video.”
All the above quotes come from the introduction to the Turner Prize catalogue, which also contained introductions - both written and visual - to these artists’ work.
Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 1998