Review relating to an exhibition, 1996
Published by: Art Monthly
Year published: 1996
Unpaginated.

2 sheets A4 portrait/monochrome reproduction from original/review in relation to an exhibition

Title: Chris Ofili, Victoria Miro Gallery, London May 25 - June 21
Author: Godfrey Worsdale
Source: Art Monthly, issue 198, July - August 1996, pp. 27-28

Review of a solo show of Chris Ofili - interesting in that this exhibition in a sense marked a development of certain ideas in the artist’s practice that would lead to him winning the Turner Prize two years later. This exhibition was also the first time the painting The Holy Virgin Mary had been shown - this painting would later cause controversy in New York where the then mayor, Rudi Giuliani would attempt to ban the exhibition, Sensation, that the painting was included in.

From the review: ”Over recent years he has succeeded in assimilating specific African aesthetic attitudes and technical means into his painting whilst making work which thoroughly satisfies the criterion of the European easel painting tradition, both in terms of pure aesthetic sensibility and that very particular sense of European decorum (as opposed to African majesty). What made this recent body of work most admirable was that the artist had, to a considerable extent, dispensed with this successful formula, and had changed the tone of the work into something altogether more funky. The dot painting style, learned from a visit to an ancient cave site in Zimbabwe, had been co-opted into the service of a much looser canon than that of traditional European art history. Instead the style and attitude of black American culture of the 70’s, which pervades and influences so much of this decades’s popular culture, had become distinctly perceptible and significant.”