He was based on a photograph of a prisoner dying the death of a

He was based on a photograph of a prisoner dying the “death of a thousand cuts” in the last days of Imperial China.Other infamous works: particularly memorable are the infant with the sex-doll mouth entitled Fuck-face; and, perhaps most notorious, the sculpture of Stephen Hawking, in a wheelchair, perched on top of a mountain, “staring off into the teleological distance”, as Jake puts it.Why Hawking? Jake: “He represents the cybernetic ideal. “Chapmanworld” was a grand celebration of perversity and freak-show indulgence. Sexually mutated shop-window dummies struck the strangest poses in a kind of seditious Garden of Eden. There were pieces like Great Deeds Against the Dead (right), and the show’s climax was a model of a wounded man hanging from the ceiling, with blood dripping from his gashes into a bucket.

They showed a meticulous re-working of Goya’s etchings The Disasters of War – a table-top covered in tiny plastic soldiers engaged in torture, murder and rape.And more recently: they had a show at the ICA last year. Then they both went to the Royal College of Art, and got their MAs there in the late 1980s.Further education: they became assistants to Gilbert and George.What they do: British art’s answer to the Gallaghers, the Chapman brothers are famous for endowing bland child mannequins with genitalia, explo- ding from the wrong places, sometimes bloodily. In Mummy and Daddy Chapman, Mummy sprouts a crop of vaginas and penises, and Daddy is covered in a rash of sphincters. An Italian dealer banned the work, provoking a pornographic attack by the brothers that attracted the attention of the vice squad.

They made a porno film featuring the severed head of the Italian dealer which was used as a sex toy.First came to notice: in 1993, when they first exhibited together. The idea of bringing more objects into the world is a strange thing.” But he’s capable of self-mockery: “I’ll spend hours on something and then realise: `I’ve just stepped on that.’ Completely Frank Spencer.”What one critic makes of him: Brian Sewell, of the London Evening Standard, reading a press release about Patterson’s fascination with “the information systems which order our lives”, retorted: “So too are computer buffs and secret police forces, and they are not eligible for the Turner Prize.”JAKE AND DINOS CHAPMANBorn: Dinos in London in 1962; Jake in Cheltenham in 1966.Educated: for their first degrees, Dinos went to Ravensbourne and Jake to North London Poly. The keys were then given labels: “China”, “Russia” and “Boutros Boutros”, for example. The political satire in the piece was reinforced by references to Swift’s Brobdingnag and Lilliput.What he says: not too much “It’s not the job of artists to answer questions To be didactic would close down the work I don’t want to lose possible meanings There are different types of taxonomy This is my choice but everyone can write their own version. In 1994, he exhibited a piece at the Chisenhale Gallery entitled General Assembly, which consisted of a giant typewriter keyboard with blue and white keys, the colours of the UN Protection force.