Chris Ofili valuation
Turner Prize winner whose glittering, resin-layered paintings stood on lumps of elephant dung.
Chris Ofili was born in Manchester in 1968 to Nigerian parents and studied at Chelsea and the Royal College.
What a work by Chris Ofili is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
Chris Ofili was born in Manchester in 1968 to Nigerian parents and studied at Chelsea and the Royal College. A travel scholarship to Zimbabwe in 1992 introduced the material that made him notorious: elephant dung, dried, varnished and used both as collaged elements within the picture and as the supports the canvases rest on instead of hanging. The paintings layer resin, glitter, map pins, magazine cuttings and dots of paint into surfaces that shift as you move. He won the Turner Prize in 1998; The Holy Virgin Mary caused a political row in New York the following year. He has lived in Trinidad since 2005.
The construction is the condition issue. Resin layers yellow and can craze, glitter and collaged paper lift, and the dung supports are integral to the work and are frequently damaged or, worse, treated as packing and discarded. These are not works that can be casually reframed or restored. The paintings are unique. There is a smaller body of watercolours, drawings — the Afromuses portraits are numerous — and editioned prints. Signature and date are usually on the reverse, and gallery provenance is the normal documentary spine.
The Upper Room, No Woman, No Cry and Requiem
Tate holds two of his best-known works. The Upper Room, thirteen paintings of monkeys made between 1999 and 2002, was bought in 2005 while Ofili was a Tate trustee, and the Charity Commission later criticised the purchase without reversing it. No Woman, No Cry, from 1998, is a portrait of Doreen Lawrence, with images of her son Stephen in the tears.
His later public work includes The Caged Bird's Song, a tapestry woven over two and a half years by Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh and unveiled at the National Gallery in 2017, and Requiem, the mural unveiled at Tate Britain in 2023 in memory of the artist Khadija Saye and the Grenfell Tower fire. Works for sale come through his galleries, Victoria Miro in London and David Zwirner, whose records are the reference.
Venice, the Tate retrospective and works on paper
In 2003 he represented Britain at the 50th Venice Biennale with Within Reach, a pavilion made with the architect David Adjaye in the red, green and black of the Pan-African flag. Tate Britain gave him the largest exhibition of his work yet in 2010, and Union Black, his Union flag in the same three colours, flew over the building while it ran. The New Museum in New York followed in 2014 with Night and Day, his first major survey in the United States, and he was made a CBE in 2017. After the move to Trinidad the paintings turned dark and blue, after the Jab Jab devils of the island's carnival and the Blue Rider painters.
Between 1995 and 2005 he made a long series of small watercolour heads, each about 24 by 16 centimetres and painted in a single sitting, and they are the works on paper most often met with. His poster for the London 2012 Olympic Games, For the Unknown Runner, was printed as an offset lithograph, 60 by 80 centimetres. Posters like it were printed in large numbers and are not the same as a signed, numbered print, so the margins and the back of the sheet are the first things to check.
Best auction results
- The Holy Virgin Mary £2.88m
- Acrylic, oil, resin, collage, glitter, map pins and elephant dung on linen, 1996 · London · 30 June 2015
- Publicly reported
- Sold by the collector David Walsh and later given to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The artist's auction record.
- Orgena £1.8m
- Painting, 1998, shown in his Turner Prize exhibition · London · 30 June 2010
- Publicly reported
- Above a high estimate of £1 million. The record until 2015.
Results as reported at the time of sale, inclusive of buyer's premium. They are a record of what specific works achieved on specific days, not a guide to what any other work is worth.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
