If you enter Tate Britain by the sunken, southern, side entrance, from Atterbury Street, you enter a cool atrium space with the shop off to your right, Information ahead of you and the downstairs exhibition space off to your left. Also on the left is the broad wide staircase leading up to the main ground floor.
This staircase is now the site of a massive artwork by contemporary British artist Chris Ofili CBE, born 55 years ago in Manchester. This huge work is a requiem for the 72 people who died in the terrible fire at the Grenfell tower block in west London. It’s in three parts, painted onto the staircase’s three walls, which the artist has called ‘chapters’.
Chapter 1: Look. Look at this. Look at what we’ve done. Look at what is happening
According to Tate’s wall label:
The bowing figure on the left-hand wall at the top of the staircase is a prophet or witness. He presents the burning tower to us, as though conducting a ceremony of loss or a requiem. Confronted by the overwhelming tragedy of what has happened, his tears fall into a great ocean of despair. Here, Ofili traces the path of souls escaping desperate peril, moving through embers or plunging into the water, then circling around and away from the tower.
Chapter 1 of ‘Requiem for Grenfell’ by Chris Ofili @ Tate Britain
Khadija Saye, an introduction
One of those who died in the fire was Gambian-British artist Khadija Saye (1992 to 2017). She was just establishing her reputation. Ofili had met her and admired her work. In the corridor at the top of the staircase a screenprint of one of her works, Andichurai, is on display. It is a photograph showing her holding an andi churai or incense pot. Widely found in Gambian homes, the andi churai burns incense to drive away evil spirits in order to provide protection. In Gambian culture, the strong scent of the incense is closely associated with women and femininity.
Andichurai by Khadija Saye (2017) from the series ‘Dwelling: in this space we breathe’. Image courtesy of the Estate of Khadija Saye
Chapter 2: Change and transformation
This explains why Ofili placed a reversioning of Saye’s face, hand and incense pot at the centre of the second or central panel of the work.
Chapter 2 of ‘Requiem for Grenfell’ by Chris Ofili @ Tate Britain
Tate’s wall label explains:
Artist Khadija Saye is at the centre of an energy force, high up on the middle wall. She represents one of the souls. She holds an andichurai (a Gambian incense pot) to her ear, in a pose taken from her own artwork. This object was precious to Saye, as it belonged to her mother. It symbolises the possibility of transformation through faith, honouring Saye’s dual faith heritage of Christianity and Islam. Ofili invites us to imagine the sound of calm solace here – perhaps like the call of the ocean you hear when holding a shell to your ear.
Chapter 3: A place for redemption, healing and hope
As you turn on the stairs and come up the final flight, you walk alongside the third panel on your left This is harder to photograph than the other two. It continues the colour washes and the water imagery of the first two panels but the main feature is what appears to be a Greek-style faun playing on some pan pipes.
Chapter 3 of ‘Requiem for Grenfell’ by Chris Ofili @ Tate Britain
The wall label explains:
To the right, the spirit of the souls emerges from the water and sky to arrive in a paradise-like landscape, resting by the banks of the water under the shade of a beautiful branching tree. Two mythical beings play a sweet, hopeful melody on their instruments. The energy of the souls is drawn to this realm of extraordinary peace. The colours of the burning tower turn into a warm sunrise or sunset. The water contains our collective grief in the flow of tears. It also links to Venice, where Ofili and Saye met. The water connects London to Ofili’s home in Trinidad.
Contemplation
Once you’ve climbed the stairs you arrive at a balcony where you can sit on a comfy bench and take in the entire composition, or leaf through one of the printed guides to the work, the guide which I’ve just been quoting from.
It’s restful. It’s peaceful. It’s like a modern Christian chapel, maybe a chapel of rest, emphasised by the way everything focuses on the face of Saye at the centre of the central panel. And the bright and vibrant colours are very…very bright and attractive.
I’m used to Ofili’s works being large and colourful. I’m used to them having lots of confetti-like bits, in this case all the dark dots which radiate from the figure of Saye. He likes dotting his works.
As to whether I liked it or not, that’s harder to say. I commend Tate for commissioning the work, I think it’s a big, bold, colourful use of the space, I appreciate the sombreness of the subject matter and the way he’s created a narrative of redemption, of sorts, through the imagery.
And yet…I had nagging doubts. The composition really does draw your eye to the central cartouche containing Saye’s face and I found this weirdly, unaccountably, unpleasurably distorted.
Detail of Chapter 2 of ‘Requiem for Grenfell’ by Chris Ofili @ Tate Britain
Obviously Ofili’s image is not intended to be disrespectful, the very opposite, but I found it eerily off-putting, as if her face is melting. I take the point that she burned to death in a horrible tragedy, and that explains the wall of fire she’s circled by but…Well, I hesitate to say it, but the central image doesn’t really feel big enough or finished enough to justify the huge amount of wall space dedicated to it.
And, now I’ve started down this line I might as well go on and say I felt the same about the third and final panel. The first one is filled with the figure of the prophet bowing down to an image of the tower, which is strange and disturbing but is at least big – it commands the space. The second, central, panel has the visual dynamic of leading your eye up to the fiery cartouche. But the third wall is almost entirely just a continuation of the (vibrant tropical) colour washes from the first two, waves along the bottom and then what may or may not be the souls of the dead rising up across the same Pride Rainbow of colours. It’s only at the very end that something happens, with Ofili’s version of a faun playing pan pipes, done in his trademark loose and rather amateurish style. So there’s a lot of brightly decorated wall before there’s anything to really look at. It feels empty.
The faun: detail of chapter 3 of ‘Requiem for Grenfell’ by Chris Ofili @ Tate Britain
It’s a bold commission. It’s a big bold work. It’s on a deservedly national theme and is an admirable attempt at commemoration. But as an actual work, it left me a bit unsatisfied; I felt it didn’t have the emotional or visual punch that you’d expect from such a horrific subject. Big patches of the wall just seemed rather empty. Sorry.
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