Chris Ofilli
Chris Ofilli was born in 1968, in Manchester, England and lives and works
in London. Ofilli studied Fine Art at Chelsea School of Art, before
completing a Masters degree in painting at the Royal College of Art.
In 1992, he was awarded a British Council travel scholarship to
Zimbabwe - a visit which has had a lasting impact on his painting. Chris
Ofilli’s paintings have been exhibited in important exhibitions all over
the world. In 1998 Filly received the Tate Gallery’s Turner Prize for his
'inventiveness, exuberance, humour and technical richness in painting.
Influences
With references as diverse as traditional African art, images from
popular culture, and hip-hop music, Chris Ofilli’s paintings explore the
contemporary black urban experience. Combined with his parodies of
1970s black exploitation movies, comic book super heroes, and
"gangsta" rap music, Ofilli’s work addresses a complex matrix of issues
that challenge black stereotypes.
As a black Briton of Nigerian descent, that first visit to Africa
encouraged him to reconsider his own identity and to develop a highly
personal aesthetic through which he examines issues of black culture,
imagery and sexual stereotyping. Chris Ofilli has said of his painting: "My
project is not a p c project ... It allows you to laugh about issues that
are potentially serious."
In the six years since he graduated from the Royal College of Art, Ofilli
has evolved a visual vocabulary of ever-increasing strength and
complexity. As a result, he is able to translate his own interests and
obsessions into paintings that deal with some of the trickier issues of the
day, such as religion and politics. Ofilli has made blackness one of his
chief subjects. An early piece, Black (1993), was a simply made book
consisting of crime reports photocopied from the pages of a local
newspaper. What linked the articles, which Ofilli presented without
comment, was their use of the word "black" to describe suspects. Ofilli
delighted in the book's ambiguity--in the fact that it could have been
put together by a white racist as well as by a black artist.
Ofilli takes the images and perceptions of blacks that he finds around
him--on TV, in magazines, in popular music and on the tough, drugridden streets near his studio at Kings Cross--and weaves them into his
paintings. His pop-culture sources include "blaxploitation" movies of the
1970s.
“Part of my approach as an artist is to go with the flow: You begin
something, and then, if you get stuck, you pull in information to
increase the momentum. The process of culture is similar--for instance,
what you find in hip-hop. I like its cut-and-paste attitude. You can often
hear where one joint ends and another begins, which is something I try
to make apparent in my work so you can see how things are made.
"My work and the way I work comes out of experimentation," said Ofilli
in an interview. Elements include the street culture of hip-hop and the
lyrics of "gangsta rap". Analogies are drawn between his painting
technique, in which materials are formed "layer by layer," to the way
hip-hop innovators compose a musical track from different layers of
instruments and sounds, laid down one at a time.
Hip-hop takes existing beats, restructures them, and injects the
individual in the form of a rap. You might not understand the lyrics, but
you always recognize the voice of a particular rapper.... For me, Pop
art is political in its attempt to be both of the self and the world, as in
hip-hop.
Trade Mark and Style
Two of their most distinguishing elements, the elephant dung and the
coloured dots, he began to use after making a six-week British Councilsponsored trip to Zimbabwe in 1992, when he was still a student at
London's Royal College of Art. The dot technique was used by the
artists who created the ancient cave paintings Ofilli saw and admired
in the Matopos hills. Ofilli’s use of dung began in Africa when,
dissatisfied with the paintings he was making there, he picked up some
dried cow dung and stuck it onto one of his canvases. When he
returned to London he took some elephant dung with him and began
to include it in his paintings; he enjoys the tension between the
beautiful paint surfaces and the perceived ugliness of the dung. Ofilli
takes pleasure in rendering his paintings as visually rich as possible. "I try
to make it [the painting] more and more beautiful, to decorate it and
dress it up so that it is so irresistible, you just want to be in front of it," But
viewers, seduced by the highly decorated surfaces into coming closer
for a really good look, may then find themselves, as Ofilli intends, seeing
more than they bargained for.
Ofilli’s intricately layered works combine bead-like dots of paint, with
collaged images from popular magazines and such materials as glitter
and map pins.
While alluding generally to his African heritage, Filly deliberately
misquotes the traditional ritual significance of dung in order to broaden
the viewer’s interpretation of this material beyond its cultural meaning.
He says this is a way of - quite literally - incorporating Africa into his
work. Works such as Afrodizzia (1996) and Blossom (1997) are
characteristic examples of his style.
Chris’s work has been described as Chris Ofilli’s a joy to behold. Dotted
with bright pastel colours, layered with shiny varnish, sprinkled with
glitter, their surfaces seem to dance and dazzle and shimmer and
shine. Some even glow in the dark. Complex, decorative and mostly
figurative, they are populated with an ever-increasing cast of
characters, both real and imaginary. And, oh yes, they are often
presented leaning against rather than hanging on the wall, supported
on balls of varnished elephant dung, the way that over-stuffed
armchairs used to rest on carved wood spheres.
Collage
Collage is a term used to describe both the technique and the
resulting work of art in which pieces of paper, photographs, fabric and
other ephemera are arranged and stuck down to a supporting
surface. Collage can also include other media such as painting and
drawing, and contain three-dimensional elements. The term collage
derives from the French words papiers collés or découpage, used to
describe techniques of pasting paper cut-outs onto various surfaces. It
was first used as an artists' technique in the twentieth century.
Resin
An organic solid, usually transparent. Natural resins derive from either
plants or insects, whereas synthetic resins (e.g. alkyd and acrylic) are
manufactured industrially. They can usually be dissolved in organic
solvents to produce a clear solution, although many synthetic resins are
produced as dispersions.
The critics
They, the art critics and historians have given Ofilli a mix of reviews over
the years some negative and some positive. "On the edge of the
permissible, " said historian Marina Warner. "A triumph for gimmickry
and shock tactics," said others.
Nevertheless, Chris Ofilli’s dense and decorative work incorporating
elephant dung with swirls of dots, Afro hair styles and black icons won
the £20,000 Turner Prize for 1998- making him the first black, and the first
artist to win the prize for contemporary British art since 1985. After the
Turner Prize, Ofilli capped an astounding year of successes. A popular
show in Southampton later toured to London's Serpentine Gallery, and
was also exhibited at the Manchester City Art Gallery.
“Ofilli has proved popular with a black audience which, it is often
assumed, feels alienated by contemporary art...(he) is highly respected
among artists, and truly deserves the prize,” said the arts corresponded
for The Independent in an ecstatic review of the Turner awards
ceremony.
‘No Woman No Cry’
Taking its title from a 1974 song by Bob Marley, No Woman No Cry is a
tribute to the family of Stephen Lawrence, a London teenager who
was murdered by a racist gang. Stephen Lawrence’s face can be
seen collaged onto each of the crying woman’s tears. The complex
surface of this work comprises layers of paint and poured resin, with
glitter and Ofilli’s trademark elephant dung. Embedded in the layers
are the words ‘R.I.P. Stephen Lawrence 1974-1993’ in florescent paint.
Ofilli’s decorative patterning contrasts with the sombre subject matter.
Filly carefully blends in the serious political issues behind this story to
form a beautiful painting of Doreen Lawrence(mother to Stephen.)This
young black man's killers have never been brought to justice, and his
parents' campaign to expose police incompetence has become a
touchstone of race relations in Britain. In his portrait of the victim's
mother, Filly brings together the familiar elements of his work--dots of
bright colour, collaged photographs (of Stephen Lawrence's face,
arranged like tears running down his mother's cheek) to create a
contemporary icon drawn from his experience of the real world.