Charlotte Higgins

Chris Ofili

A New Retelling, with Drawings by Chris Ofili

Greek Myths

Catherine Lampert

Essays by Louis Antwi, Bazon Brock, Carolina Grau and Greg Tate. Introduction by Christoph Zuchlag.

Ovid -- Diana & Actaeon

Gabriele Finaldi

Minna A. Moore Ede

Two and a half years in the making, 'The Caged Bird's Song' is a monumental tapestry by the celebrated British artist, Chris Ofili. Accompanying 'Chris Ofili: Weaving Magic', the artist's ambitious presentation of the tapestry within a specially conceived environment in the Sunley Room at the National Gallery, this publication tells the story of the work?s evolution and documents the close collaboration between Ofili and master weavers who have interpreted his designs with astonishing nuance. A suite of previously unseen preparatory watercolours and works on paper and a revealing essay by the exhibition's curator, Minna Moore Ede, further illuminate this extraordinary project by one of the most acclaimed artists working today.

Weaving Magic

In 2017, Chris Ofili photographed chain-link fences throughout the island of Trinidad in order to explore notions of beauty, community, liberation, and constraint. This series of arresting images—“pocket photography,” as described by the artist—is the first body of photography ever published by Ofili. Through these entrancing black-and-white photographs, the artist engages with the diverse sources that inspired his critically acclaimed Paradise Lost exhibition at David Zwirner, New York in the fall of 2017. Since moving to Trinidad in 2005, Ofili has continued to engage with the surrounding environment and culture, which has found its way into many of his colorful paintings. In these deceivingly simple black-and-white photographs, he captures a wide cross section of Trinidad as he highlights the encounter between natural and man-made settings, and the different aesthetic possibilities each brings out in the other. In focusing on a ubiquitous and seemingly unremarkable piece of equipment, Ofili is able to comment on our interactions with space and each other, using a near-universal subject as the fence slices the sky, melds into a tree, frames a basketball game, or reveals an opening. In a new essay by the critically acclaimed author of Island People: The Caribbean and the World (2016), Joshua Jelly-Schapiro charts the history of chain-link fences; focusing on a selection of Ofili’s photographs, he then begins to explore what this imagery tells us about Trinidad in particular and the Caribbean as a whole. These two essays—one visual, the other literary—open onto a whole new set of interpretive possibilities for this groundbreaking artist.

Chris Ofili: Paradise Lost

David Adjaye

Carol Becker

A monograph survey of the alternate-media artist's development and creative expression of the contemporary world explores his blending of African ritual, western tradition, and hip-hop culture as well as his use of such materials as bead-dot paint, popular media collages, and elephant dung.

Victoria Miro Gallery

Installation of 13 paintings of rhesus macaque monkeys in a large walnut-panelled room designed by architect David Adjaye. The room is approached through a dimly-lit corrridor, which is designed to give a sense of anticipation. Each painting depicts a monkey based around a different colour theme (grey, red, white etc.). The twelve smaller paintings show a monkey from the side and they are based on a 1957 Andy Warhol drawing. The larger monkey is depicted from the front. Each painting is individually spotlit in the otherwise darkened room. The room is designed to create an impressive and contemplative atmosphere. The paintings each rest on two round lumps of elephant dung, treated and coated in resin. There is also a lump of the dung on each painting. Strictly speaking, each work is mixed media, comprising paint, resin, glitter, mapping pins and elephant dung. The Upper Room as a whole is described by the Tate (which bought the piece in 2005) as an "installation". The Upper Room is a reference to the Biblical Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples, hence the thirteen paintings. Ofili states the work is not intended to be offensive, but rather to contrast the harmonious life of the monkeys with the travails of the human race.

The Upper Room

Elena Filipovic

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel marked the artist's first institutional solo in Switzerland, and filled the Kunsthalle's upstairs galleries with twenty-four new paintings, initiating what was her largest show of new work to date. For her New Museum exhibition, Yiadom-Boakye is debuting a new body of work, all created in the first months of 2017. As part of an ongoing series of exhibitions that provide a focused look at artist's practices by presenting new bodies of work, this exhibition also takes part in the New Museum's long history of giving artists major solo museum exhibitions at pivotal points in their careers.

Chris Ofili

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