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Course: Tate > Unit 7
Lesson 4: Conservation: Behind the scenesConserving Chris Ofili
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Tate’s Conservation Department works hard behind the scenes to ensure that future generations can enjoy the paintings, sculptures, and other works in the collection. But it’s not just the old masters that get their attention–because contemporary artists work in a diverse and sometimes unusual range of materials, the team often undertakes extensive research to help them and see how their works will hold up in the future. Join paintings conservator Natasha Walker as she explains how the team goes about conserving Chris Ofili’s paintings by creating replicas of his works and subjecting them to drops, falls, cracks, and accelerated aging processes. With the help of the artist, his assistants, and even an elephant, the team’s “Chris Ofilis” might not be as good as the real thing, but they will help protect the originals well into the future. Created by Tate.
Tate’s Conservation Department works hard behind the scenes to ensure that future generations can enjoy the paintings, sculptures, and other works in the collection. But it’s not just the old masters that get their attention–because contemporary artists work in a diverse and sometimes unusual range of materials, the team often undertakes extensive research to help them and see how their works will hold up in the future. Join paintings conservator Natasha Walker as she explains how the team goes about conserving Chris Ofili’s paintings by creating replicas of his works and subjecting them to drops, falls, cracks, and accelerated aging processes. With the help of the artist, his assistants, and even an elephant, the team’s “Chris Ofilis” might not be as good as the real thing, but they will help protect the originals well into the future. Created by Tate.
Want to join the conversation?
Why at3:00there is a picture of Obama?(7 votes)
It's because Ofili uses collage techniques in his work, you can see little photos in the tears of "No Woman, No Cry" for instance, another example being the images of womens' buttocks on "The Holy Virgin Mary".
The conservators used the photos on the test canvases to see how they would age along with the paint, ground, and varnish.
Why Obama specifically? I assume it would be because of Ofili's interest in racial politics. There's another, different, portrait higher up on the test canvas as well.
Secondly they could be seeing how the different skin tones in the test portraits age as well.(4 votes)
I just finished the last quiz for this module of 'Identity, the body and the subversion of Modernism' and my learning grid shows only 97% finished. Where do I find where I did not finish something? Thanks for any help(1 vote)
That happens because we were in the process of adding more content. Look for the new essay on a Cindy Sherman.(1 vote)
3:00Video transcript
we were interested in the long-term care of the chris ofili paintings because he uses unconventional materials obviously the elephant dung balls and also the polyester resin we wanted to experiment with the materials and the best way of doing this seemed to us to make a replica which we could then subject to test because obviously we can't test the original material we went to extreme lengths to get all the right materials we use the same suppliers and we made sure that the brands of paint were the same I was told we were getting the dung from exactly the same elephant at the beginning of the project we found out that the canvas that he used is discontinued so we couldn't buy it from the normal supplier so he very kindly found some old roles of the same canvas and donated them to us Chris replies up to four layers of priming and he smoothes each one by sanding it down and took like a marble smoothness and then on top of that he draws a graphic often quite intricate design we didn't go to the lengths at the artists did because a lot of it is covered with the leg that goes on top which is acrylic paint in a really nice swirly psychedelic design with every color of the rainbow on top of that it's very dilute oil paint which is dripped down the surface and once that's dry he he creates a sort of foliage backgrounds that foliage background is painted in oil paints he scratches through so you can see some of the colors underneath so once the foliage is finished then and we attached the dung ball which has been drying out and that's attached using a hot glue gun the next stage was to apply the and polyester resin and that's really nasty stuff the reason for making the full-size replica is we're going to drop it and see at what drop height the resin will crack or the dung ball will fall off we've made some canvases on which we painted out Chris's materials from all the different paints and the felt pen that he uses and also the phosphorescent medium and we're going to subject it to artificial aging intense light will be thrown on it 24 hours a day seven days a week for several months to see what the materials will look like in about 50 to 100 years time by having seen so many and made them myself I feel really well informed of how they're made and so that if there is anything that doesn't quite look right I understand it better like if they're if there's a crack I can maybe work out where it's come for how it was formed you always end up really enjoying an artwork when you know more about it you