Julian Opie
Born – London, England 1958
Julian Opie’s early work was a stylish exploration of the relationship between everyday objects and environments with which people interact, and the objects we label as art. This forms part of a discussion that has informed artistic practice since Marcel Duchamp, but which came to renewed prominence during the early 1980s in the light of Conceptual art developments of the 1970s. H appears like an industrially produced heating vent, or ventilation grille. In the contexts in which such a structure might ordinarily appear – an office or factory setting – it would largely be ignored, serving a purely utilitarian function. Within a gallery or museum it fulfils a different purpose, drawing attention to itself as an autonomous art object for contemplation. Our relationship to it is completely altered. H is one of a series of works that duplicates the materials and form of industrially made partitions and office furnishings. This complements earlier hand-painted sculptures of domestic objects. Experiments with colour and computer animation have informed Opie’s more recent works. His portraits of the four members of the pop group Blur were used on the cover of their “best of” album in 2000.
Masterpieces:
- Making It
- Imagine You Can Order These (I)
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About julian opie
Julian Opie: Recent Works
Timothy Clark
Buy on Amazon
Julian Opie (Tate Modern Artists)
Mary Horlock
Buy on Amazon
Julian Opie: Portraits 1997-2002
Daniel Kurjakovic
Buy on Amazon