Shortlist: Frederick Gore's oil on canvas, Naked at the Feast

Quinn uses the human body as his primary subject. Sometimes it is the actual material from which his figures are made.

One of his best known works - Self - is the cast of his head created from his own blood and kept in a refrigeration unit.

Lost limbs

Quinn's sculpture Catherine Long is part of a series which comprises nude, life-size marble portraits of four men and four women deprived of one or more limbs as a result of birth, illness or accident.

Although the figures recall classical sculptures that have lost limbs, Quinn's use of the sitters' names emphasises that these sculptures represent individuals and not mythological figures.

Quinn, 37, was born in London in 1964. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1985 and has shown widely in Britain, Europe and the United States.

His work is in the collections of Tate, London, Pompidou Centre, Paris and Museum of Modern Art, New York. He was commissioned to create a new work for the Science Museum's Wellcome Wing as part of their arts commissioning programme. He currently lives and works in London.

This year's Summer Exhibition was curated by British pop artist Peter Blake, best known for designing the cover for the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper album.

Shortlist: Richard Serra's paintstick on canvas Huddie Leadbelly

Blake controversially asked a group of prominent non-Academy artists like Emin, Riley and McCartney to take part in the show.

The judges for this year's Wollaston Award were artists Fred Cuming and Richard Deacon, Catherine Lampert - the outgoing director of The WhiteChapel Gallery - and Christopher Lloyd, surveyor of the Queen's Pictures.

The Wollaston award was set up in 1978 with a donation from Charles Wollaston, who was a lecturer in art and an enthusiastic supporter of the RA.

Previous winners include David Hockney, John Hoyland and RB Kitaj.

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition runs at the Royal Academy, London, from 5 June to 13 August.