Chris Ofili incorporates lumps of elephant dung in every work, including one inspired by the sorrow of Stephen Lawrence's parents.

No Woman No Cry was created while the summer's inquiry into the unsolved racial murder was going on in London.

It depicts a weeping black woman, and Stephen Lawrence's face appears in each tear.

"It is about the personal suffering of that family, and particularly of Stephen's mother, Doreen," said curator Victoria Button.

Inspired by Doreen Lawrence

Each piece of Chris Olfili's work is perched on two lumps of elephant dung

The figure, who wears a pendant of elephant dung, was inspired by Doreen, although it is not a portrait of her.

The 29-year-old Ofili is favourite to win the £20,000 Turner Prize for the young British artist with the best exhibition this year.

His colourful multi-layered paintings use glitter, photographs of leading black figures, often disguised or painted over, and his own cartoon-like characters.

He has had to create new works for the Turner Prize exhibition because so many of his paintings are already on display elsewhere.

Instead of hanging on the wall, each canvas is perched on two lumps of elephant dung.

Gets dung from zoo

At first Ofili used supplies he brought back from a trip to Zimbabwe.

Now he gets it from London Zoo, and dries it out in an airing cupboard.

Ofili is the only man on the shortlist, but he is not the only artist to raise eyebrows.

Disconcerting sculptures

Cathy de Monchaux's Never Forget The Power Of Tears

Cathy de Monchaux, 37, creates disconcerting sculptures from pink leather and metal. At the heart of her exhibition are ranks of flat tombstone-shaped lead panels with an aisle of intricate 'Venus man-trap' shapes through the middle.

Ms Button said the pieces evoked the metaphysical tensions between sex and death.

Sam Taylor-Wood, 31, uses friends and actors to create film and photographic explorations of human relationships and tensions.

In Atlantic, three video projectors show an angry, crying woman on one wall, her date's fidgeting hands on another and their restaurant backdrop on a third - with their row drowned out by an ambient soundtrack.

The fourth artist, Tacita Dean, 32, presents Disappearance At Sea, a 14-minute film showing dusk falling over a lighthouse. It is meant to evoke the deliberate disappearance of failed round-the-world yachtsman Donald Crowhurst in 1968.

Eagerly-anticipated event

The exhibition, at the Tate Gallery, runs until January 10 and is one of the most eagerly-anticipated art events of the year.

Art writer Louisa Buck hopes criticism of the works on show will move on from whether they are 'art' or not.

"That kind of criticism doesn't happen in any other medium. Nobody asks if a challenging piece of music is music or not, or if a book is a book.