The National Art Gallery - Chris Ofili Weaving Magic exhibition

The National Gallery is in Trafalgar Square, London. I visited the Chris Ofili Weaving Magic exhibition on the 3rd of august 2017 during my summer holidays. 

The National Art Gallery - Chris Ofili Weaving Magic exhibition

In this exhibition, two rooms are included. The first has larger than life women dancers on the walls and these women wear bangles, anklets, necklaces, earrings and turbans. They are smiling and are surrounded by closely compacted foliage in grey. The women give knowing looks and on the wall furthest away from the entrance the dancers clear a space for a large tapestry, an eruption of colour, like a sudden rainbow. The second room holds Ofili's water colour paintings and a corner where you can watch a film on the journey to create the tapestry. 

Overall, I enjoyed this exhibition and whilst it is no longer at the gallery I would recommend anyone to go see Chris Ofili's work elsewhere. The colours he selected on the tapestry complemented each other and I liked how large it was. I particularly enjoyed that the tapestry was made to took like a watercolour painting, it was beautiful and unique. I thought the tapestry stood out compared to the ladies painted in black, grey and white and thought this was effective in drawing attention to the main star of the exhibition. The video playing in the corner, in my opinion, was a nice touch as it showed and explained the process of weaving the tapestry and the inspiration behind the work. The actual painting he completed were very good and I think Ofili has a very popular modern style of art. 

I would have liked the exhibition even more if there was a larger variety of his other work and if there was descriptions of what his work means to him as his watercolour painting were quite abstract. I like that abstract is up for interpretation, I just would have like the real stories behind his art. 

Header Image Credit: Photo taken of me in the main exhibition room

Author

Felicity Hills

Felicity Hills

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2 Comments

  • Joshua Gould

    On 19 October 2018, 15:34 Joshua Gould Contributor commented:

    Hi Felicity, this is a lovely review - how do you think the works you saw here will affect your own craft?

  • Felicity Hills

    On 21 October 2018, 21:27 Felicity Hills commented:

    Than you Joshua, I think I will be more open to try creating in different types of media and experiment more.

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