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Tapestry and room painting installed at The National Gallery, London
This exhibition unveils Chris Ofili's first designed tapestry, a triptych entitled The Caged Bird's Song.
The title echoes the writer and black activist Maya Angelou's powerful autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
The tapestry
The tapestry
The tapestry is hung against a painted mural, designed by the artist especially for its installation in the National Gallery. A sequence of swaying, monumental temple dancers entices the visitor towards the richly coloured, hand-woven wall hanging. In this room a selection of works on paper show the evolution of Ofili's ideas and the assembling of the composition.
Chris Ofili
Chris Ofili
Ofili is a British artist who lives and works in Trinidad.
Renowned for his fluid and sensual painting style, Ofili's challenge to the weavers was to capture the qualities of watercolour painting in thread.
He provided them with a preparatory watercolour design which they used as a primary aid during the weaving process. The weavers scaled-up his design on the warp of the loom and spent two and a half years hand-weaving the tapestry, in close collaboration with the artist.
The Caged Bird's Song
The Caged Bird's Song
Ofili explains: 'The Caged Bird's Song is a marriage of watercolour and weaving. I set out to do something free-flowing in making a watercolour, encouraging the liquid pigment to form the image, a contrast to the weaving process. With their
response, which is an interpretation rather than a reproduction, the weavers have paid a type of homage to the watercolour that I gave them as well as to the process of weaving.'
On either side of the central panel, a man and a woman draw back curtains to reveal an Arcadian scene. Beneath a waterfall, beside lapping waters with the sea behind, a couple recline, their bodies intertwined. As the guitar-playing man serenades his companion, she drinks a sparkling liquid which is poured into her glass by a figure hidden above.
Oblivious to our gaze, the couple appear absorbed in their actions, but the thunderous sky to the left suggests that there is a darkening to come.
Commissioned by the City of London's Clothworkers' Company, and woven at Dovecot Tapestry Studio, Edinburgh, the tapestry's permanent home will be in Clothworkers' Hall.
Balotelli heads
Balotelli heads
This series of studies explores the figure of footballer Mario Balotelli, the source for the magical cocktail waiter in the tapestry.
Appearing in the sky, he pours down a liquid which is imbibed by the woman below. Beginning with sketches that incorporate a cut-out photo of Balotelli's head, turned sideways and adorned with a large bow tie, Ofili gradually abstracts this image and then experiments in colour. The footballer has long intrigued the artist, both for his prodigious skill and for the struggles he has encountered as a black footballer with Italian nationality.
Water colours
Water colours
By the time he made the finished watercolour design (The Caged Bird's Song 2014), Ofili had decided on the triptych format and the watery-blue colour palette. This design remained with the weavers for the duration of the weaving process. Brush marks that had taken Ofili moments to make, and areas in which the watercolour medium was encouraged to have a life of its own, were translated and interpreted by the weavers over the course of months and years.
Side panels
Side panels
These studies for the side panels show Ofili experimenting with different male and female characters. Their role is to draw back the curtains, revealing the scene behind them. Although the composition of The Caged Bird's Song (Voyeur) was abandoned, the sense that we are being shown a surreptitious glimpse of the central tableau is implicit in the final
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