Now 41, in his earliest creations he is impish, fizzing colours across canvasses resting on balls of the safari-sourced excrement, but by the second room his nascent self-realisation has sharpened, finding the booming, outlandish voice to match some of the rappers whose heads he routinely incorporates into pieces.

In 1996 the car park of Ofili's King’s Cross studio was a venue for round-the-clock prostitution.

Brought up as a Catholic altarboy, he responded with depictions of porn queens, a comic phallus featuring magazine cut-outs, Two Doo Voodoo – a burst of anaemic yellow festooned with black sport and music icons – and Captain S***, his own imaginary hero juxtaposing the world he surveyed.

"He was struck by the violent lyrics of gangster rap and the sweetness of the voices of rappers like Snoop Dogg," says Nesbitt.

"He was trying to do something similar with his painting. Could you combine that aggression and intensity with something that’s very decorative and beautiful?"

There's The Holy Virgin Mary, in which Ofili re-imagines the biblical figure as a blaxploitation Madonna amid snippets of graphic porn. It stands adjacent to No Woman No Cry, where a mourning maternal figure weeps, her tears forming lockets sealing pictures of murdered schoolboy Stephen Lawrence. The piece was made as the inquiry into his death shook multicultural Britain.

Poignant and still, it singlehandedly illustrates why he won the Turner Prize that year, but also preludes Ofili's huge dexterity.

His visions can abhor, amuse and affect, combining the holy and obscene. They morph showbiz colour into profound mysticism on surfaces intertwining layer upon layer of collage, glass-like gel, pigment-imbued resin, glitter and paint.

At the heart of the show lies The Upper Room (pictured top), a vault of coffins which first showed at the Tate eight years ago, traversed through a darkened tunnel. These are 13 paintings based on the apostles from the last supper, intensely-coloured religious monkey symbols inspired by Andy Warhol.

Outside are watercolours of pin-ups, used for their immediacy as, according to Nesbitt, Ofili tried to "clear his head". There are also dark, folkloric visions from Trinidad, where a guru-like deity devours yellow blossom from a tree and shadowy, haunting paintings made solely in blue as a gloomy dusk descends.

One of them resembles silhouettes of musicians on a bridge, until you notice Judas hanging gruesomely from a rope to their right.

"There's an evident darkness to them," says Nesbitt. "He loves that half hour where you aren't sure what you’re seeing."

The flamboyance which made Ofili's name has disappeared by now, replaced by his menacing new world in a chilling and enthralling transformation.

"He says he's doing more of the listening now, working in a more open-minded way, letting it be, waiting to see where it's going to go," Nesbitt reflects.

"That's one of the most exciting factors in this exhibition. He's still a young artist. He's got some way to go."

Admission £8.50-£10. Book online or call 020 7887 8888.

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