After the Dance

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for International Trade, Old Admiralty Building

The outlines of a man and a woman as they dance on a beach are just visible in Chris Ofili's screenprint. The figures are dressed in formal clothes and the indentations made by their footprints in the sand cover the foreground of the image. In the background the leaves of a single palm tree tower over the couple and in the far distance, a mountain, reminiscent of the volcano of St Lucia, is illuminated by stars.

Although most well known for his brightly coloured decorative works, since 2002, Ofili has created a body of work which explores sexual relationships, the nature of love and black racial politics. This work is related to another screenprint by Ofili in the Government Art Collection, entitled 'Afro Lunar Lovers' (2003) in which a heterosexual couple stand cheek to cheek under moonlight in a scene reminiscent of a 1950s Hollywood film still.

In using different shades of an intense blue to create the image, Ofili pays reference to the Expressionist group, Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a loose association of artists formed in 1911. The group, whose members included Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, advocated the use of psychologically charged colours to focus on spiritual themes.

Chris Ofili was born in Manchester and completed an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art in 1992. He was included in the influential Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1997. He had a major exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, London, in 1998, and won the Turner Prize the same year. Ofili was the first black artist to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2002. His work is held in the Tate Collection and he currently lives in Trinidad.

Chris Ofili was born in Manchester and studied at Chelsea School of Art from 1988 to 1991. While studying for his MA at the Royal College of Art in 1992, he was awarded the British Council travel scholarship to Zimbabwe. Of Nigerian descent, Ofili found in Zimbabwe an opportunity to reconsider his own identity at home in Britain and how he was perceived abroad. He began to incorporate elephant dung and decorative dots into his canvases, as well as drawing on a variety of influences from Black British culture, including magazines, music and mainstream media. Ofili was included in the influential Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1997. He had a major exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 1998, and won the Turner Prize the same year. Ofili was the first Black artist to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2002. His work is held in international collections including the Tate Collection and he was appointed CBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to art. Ofili moved to Trinidad in 2005 and now divides his time between the Caribbean, London and New York.

Places

Subjects

dance, tree, palm, mountain, man, woman

Materials & Techniques

screenprint

Artist

Chris Ofili (1968 - )

Title

After the Dance

Portfolio Title

The Rivington Place Portfolio

Edition

16/50

Date

2006

Medium

Screenprint on Somerset Velvet paper

Dimensions

height: 76.80 cm, width: 51.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Autograph ABP, October 2007

Inscription

below image: 16/50 / "After the Dance" / Chris Ofili / 2006 ; verso bl: [stamp] / BRODSKY / CENTER 07-329

Provenance

Autograph ABP, London

GAC number

18146/5