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Tate Britain Exhibition

Chris Ofili: The Upper Room

13 September 2005 – 1 January 2007
Chris Ofili The Upper Room (Installation, Victoria Miro Gallery, June 2002) 1999–2002

Chris Ofili The Upper Room (Installation, Victoria Miro Gallery, June 2002) 1999–2002

© Chris Ofili   Image:courtesy Victoria Miro Gallery, London   Photo: Lyndon Douglas

Chris Ofili’s The Upper Room consists of thirteen paintings displayed in an environment especially designed by the architect David Adjaye. When it was first publicly exhibited in 2002, critics commented on the chapel-like qualities of the space and its lighting. The arrangement of twelve canvases flanking a thirteenth larger one suggests Christ and his Apostles, and the arrangement has an extraordinary sensory effect.

Each painting shows a rhesus macaque monkey, and each is dominated by a different colour, identified in Spanish on the elephant dung supports. In a text that accompanied the work’s first exhibition, a conservation biologist described the rhesus macaque as ‘loud, active, entertaining, fearsomely intelligent – the consummate cheeky monkey’. She also pointed out how rhesus monkeys have been venerated in certain religions, and observed that ‘monkeys may be godless but … rhesus macaques display a deeper degree of compassion for each other than do human beings’.

With this work Ofili raises questions about the relationships between civilisation and untamed nature, between the religious and the secular.

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Dates

13 September 2005 – 1 January 2007

BP British Art Displays

BP British Art Displays

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  • Chris Ofili Tate Britain exhibition banner

    Chris Ofili

    Chris Ofili exhibition at Tate Britain 27 January to 16 May 2010

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    David Adjaye on Chris Ofili

    Chris Ofili's The Upper Room was first displayed in 2002, to great critical acclaim. This installation, on show in the current exhibition, consists of thirteen works in a chapel-like environment designed by the award-winning architect David Adjaye.

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    Chris Ofili

    born 1968
  • Works in the collection

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