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Chris Ofili
born 1968
The Upper Room
1999–2002
Oil, acrylic, glitter, graphite, fibre tip pen, polyester resin and map pins on thirteen canvases with elephant dung supports
Purchased from Victoria Miro Gallery with assistance from Tate Members, the National Art Collections Fund and private benefactors, 2005
T11925

Chris Ofili’s The Upper Room consists of thirteen paintings displayed so that twelve canvases flank a thirteenth larger one, suggesting Christ and his Apostles. Each painting shows a rhesus macaque monkey. In a text that accompanied the work’s first exhibition, a conservation biologist pointed out how rhesus monkeys have been venerated in certain religions, and observed that ‘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 civilization and untamed nature, between the religious and the secular.

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Click on images for more about each highlight

• Christopher Wood
  1901–30
  Zebra and Parachute
  1930
• Barbara Hepworth
  1903–75
  Spring
  1966
• Mary Martin
  1907–69
  Perspex Group on Orange (B)
  1969
• Antony Gormley
  born 1950
  Testing a World View
  1993
• Martin Boyce
  born 1967
  From ‘Our Love is Like the Flowers, the Rain, the Sea and the Hours’
  2002
• Chris Ofili
  born 1968
  The Upper Room
  1999–2002
• Gilbert & George
  born 1943 / born 1942
  Fates
  2005
• Richard Long
  born 1945
  Red Slate Circle
  1988
• John Latham
  1921–2006
  Full Stop
  1961