Chris Ofili
Chris Ofili
Christopher "Chris" Ofiliis an English Turner Prize-winning painter who is best known for his paintings incorporating elephant dung. He was one of the Young British Artists. Since 2005, Ofili has been living and working in Trinidad, where he currently resides in Port of Spain. He also lives and works in London and Brooklyn...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth10 October 1968
doors creative trying
Sometimes, as I feel a door or an exit point in my work is closing, I'll try to create an opening so as not to stifle the creative process, which I see as a process that's never-ending.
art school thinking
When I was painting in art school - and I think many painters in the 1980s worked similarly - a finished painting would often be constructed from lots of other paintings underneath. Some of these individual layers of painting were better than others, but that was something that you would often only realise retrospectively.
thinking sudden-change studios
Often I think changes within my work have been seen as sudden changes or sharp changes, but for me they're not that sudden. They have been there in the studio, but not so much in public.
art people routine
In the end, it doesn't really matter what you paint. It's all just a routine to connect yourself finally with other people.
college want royal
When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life.
talking people made
There was a point in time where the thought of people even talking about me made me anxious. Physically.
perception
I'm aware that success can overwhelm you. The perception of you can be elevated to such a status that it's not you any more.
who-i-am magic mastermind
There's a magic that comes from playing entirely to who you are. I've got my specialist subject - in the Mastermind sense - and I wouldn't change it, or who I am.
ideas body way
The studio is a place where I can experiment before I'm prepared for an idea to become a body of work, or a new way of working, or a way of working that can sustain me over a period of time.
hip-hop listening enemy
I was listening to a lot of hip hop, music like Public Enemy that was about raising consciousness, and I realised I could feed that directly into my work, using images in a way that was a bit like sampling - taking images from diverse places, exploring the contradictions without trying to hide the seams.
exhibitions process results
The studio is a laboratory, not a factory. An exhibition is the result of your experiments, but the process is never-ending. So an exhibition is not a conclusion.