Chris Ofili  (born 1968) in Manchester in the UK. A painter noted for artworks referencing aspects of his Nigerian heritage. He is one of the Young British Artists or Britart group. A Turner Prize winner 1998 and his work has been a source of controversy.

He studied art in London, at the Chelsea School of Art from 1988 to 1991 and at the Royal College of Art from 1991 to 1993. Ofili was established through exhibitions by Charles Saatchi at his gallery in North London and the travelling exhibition Sensation (1997) becoming recognised as one of the few British artists of African/Caribbean descent to breakthrough as a member of BritArt.

He won a scholarship which allowed him to travel to Zimbabwe Ofili, studied cave paintings there which had some effect on his style.  

Though Ofili's detractors often state that he "splatters"elephant dung (a substance which is used in a variety of rituals in Africa) on his pictures, this is inaccurate: he sometimes applies it directly to the canvas in the form of dried spherical lumps, and sometimes, in the same form, uses it as foot-like supports on which the paintings stand.

Ofili's painting also references black exploitation films and gagster rap often to question racial and sexual stereotypes in a humorous way. His work is often built up in layers of paint, resin, glitter, dung and other materials to create a painting. Ofili's paintings exalt in the power of colour, decoration and sexuality. They are intensely laboured, with intricate details of dots of acrylic and oil paint, collaged images, glitter and map pins, forming vast patterns sunk into layers of glossy resin. Close up the viewer is lost in myriad veins of paint but from a distance all is resolved in graceful, line drawn compositions. Varnished balls of elephant dung are applied on top of the picture, punctuating nodal points of the image. Elephant dung balls also support the canvas, both elevating if from and grounding it to the earth.

"Elephant dung is an essential component of my work and it would be impossible for me to create my paintings without the elephants," said the artist yesterday. "It has been a rare honour and opportunity to get to know Mya, Layang-Layang and Dilberta."

Ofili's painting of a black Madonna with one breast made from dung and a background of collages from soft porn magazines caused an outcry in New York.

The Holy Virgin Mary, a depiction of the Virgin Mary was at issue in a lawsuit between the mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art when it was exhibited there in 1999 as a part of the Sensation exhibit. The painting depicted a black African Mary surrounded by images from blaxploitation movies and close-ups of female genitalia cut from pornographic magazines, and elephant dung. These were formed into shapes reminiscent of the cherubim and seraphim commonly depicted in images of the Immaculate conception and the Assumption of Mary. Following the scandal surrounding this painting, Bernard Goldberg ranked Ofili #86 in 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America.
Chris Ofili says 'the way I work comes out of experimentation, but it also comes out of a love of painting, a love affair with painting.' He mixes a wide range of cultural references, from the Bible to pornographic magazines, from 1970s comics to the work of artists such as William Blake.

He also experiments outside the traditional confines of oil paint, introducing things like elephant dung into his work; he enjoys the tension between the beautiful paint surfaces and the perceived ugliness of the dung.

The Tate has broken the law by buying art produced by serving trustees, including a £600,000 work by Chris Ofili, the Charity Commission ruled. The Tate failed to seek permission, not only in the case of the Ofili work, The Upper Room.The Upper Room is an installation of 13 canvases set in a purpose-built walnut-lined room. Loosely based on the Last Supper, it depicts monkeys rather than apostles, in brightly illuminated, jewel-like colours, and with the canvases resting on pieces of elephant dung.

Since its purchase in 2006 it has been seen by 250,000 people.

Tate has been criticised because Ofili was a trustee at the time The Upper Room was acquired. In reply, the gallery has categorically stated that Ofili "withdrew from all discussions at trustees' meetings and played no part in the negotiation" for the purchase of The Upper Room. Even so, under normal circumstances museums do not purchase works by their own trustees. Why did it happen in this case?

The answer is that these were not normal circumstances. The Upper Room is not a single picture that the trustees could have declined to purchase in the knowledge that they would have another opportunity to acquire an equally good picture at a later date. It is a huge installation - 13 life-sized paintings displayed in a gallery designed by the architect David Adjaye. The Museum of Modern Art in New York had expressed strong interest in acquiring it, and certainly had the money to do so.

With MoMA breathing down their necks, the Tate trustees either had to act at once or lose one of the most important works of British art painted in the last 25 years. Had the gallery let the work go, I'd now be writing an article castigating the director and trustees for their obtuseness. And what if Ofili had stepped down from the board? It would still have been possible to point to his recent association with the gallery and accuse Tate of cronyism. By asking the artist to step aside during the negotiations, the trustees secured a masterpiece while adhering to the highest ethical standards.

Just as shocking to me are the implications that Ofili made some sort of financial killing out of the sale. It took him about four years (1998-2002) to paint The Upper Room, years when he could have been churning out scores of canvases that his dealer, Victoria Miro, would have had no trouble selling at £75,000 each. Then, despite a number of offers to buy individual works from the series (the total would come to almost £1 million), Ofili insisted that The Upper Room be sold as a whole, but at a reduced price of £750,000. When Tate said it was interested, he further lowered the price to £600,000.

though he is universally acclaimed as one of this country's most important young artists, by 2004 Ofili had had no serious income at all for six years. Despite this, he waited a further year while Tate and Miro raised most of the money from private sources. At the end of the day, only £120,000 of the selling price came from public sources. Considering that a collector paid $1 million for a single painting by Ofili in New York last May, I'd say the British public got the bargain of the century.

This brings up the issue of "transparency". Why is Tate so secretive about revealing the prices it pays for works of art, and the process whereby they are acquired? An artist and his dealer bend over backwards to place the artist's work in a British public collection where it will be seen by huge numbers of people. To achieve this, they offer the work to the museum at a heavy discount. No one - artist, dealer or museum - wants to broadcast this widespread practice, because then the dot com billionaire from California who can well afford to pay the full price will want the same discount as the museum. Isn't it in all our interests to keep this practice "secret"?  Miro and Ofili deserve medals for acting not in their own interests but for the public good.

Ofili explores decoration and abstraction. Decorating his surfaces with excessive patterns, using collage techniques borrowed from folk art, Ofili's multi-layered approach challenged the rules of good taste by a skilful combination of eclectic elements. Playful in realization, brash in materials, they have a patched-together, homemade look that allows a gentle romantic spirit to animate the cultural mix of their making."
How to beat that description? Ofili was in Zimbabwe when he realized that he wanted a more natural look to his paintings, something to connect them to the earth and nature. How to do that? Throw elephant shit on them.

"The paintings themselves are very delicate abstractions, and I wanted to bring their beauty and decorativeness together with the ugliness of shit and make them exist in a twilight zone - you know they're there together, but you can't really ever feel comfortable about it."

Young British Artists or YBAs  also Brit artists and Britart  a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists derived from the Sensation Saatchi Gallery Exhibition.

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Chris Ofili Black Woman painting Sale on rolled canvas painted with artists acrylic paint. Hand painted copy.

30" x 40" canvas

R.R.P. £179.99

SALE Price £97

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Chris Ofili_ Dump on the Virgin Mary painting Sale on rolled canvas painted with artists acrylic paint. Hand painted copy.

30" x 40" canvas

R.R.P. £179.99

SALE Price £97

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