Marks out of ten: 9/10

It is an odd feeling to see “7 Bitches Tossing Their Pussies Before the Divine Dung” neatly inscribed onto one of the pristine white walls of Tate Britain. But if you go to see the paintings of Chris Ofili, this is what you’ll see and more. Reactions to his work include giggles, titters and disgust. One outraged viewer reacted: “See these girls – absolutely no morals”, when looking at watercolours of naked women with legs splayed.

Chris Ofili’s early works were the most familiar to me and include: Shithead (1993) – a ball of elephant dung with human teeth and hair attached to it; Blind Popcorn (1995) – faces with blacked out eyes in a criss-cross pattern that surrounds four balls of dung; Blossom (1997) – a cartoon-like portrait of a fictional woman, her name spelt out on balls of dung down the side; and Popcorn Tits (1995) – bejewelled dung surrounded by a collage of breasts ripped from magazines. The theme of decorated dung, collaged body parts and dots of paint continues throughout Ofili’s early work, but makes a surprise turn in later years (2007-2009), when the multi-coloured palette is stripped down to shades of blue.

Somewhere inbetween this change in technique and use of colour, his work explores a more spiritual theme. You walk along a dark corridor, where chinks of light shining through square holes at the bottom of a plywood wall show the way, and turn the corner to enter the inner sanctum of the Upper Room. Twelve identically painted monkeys line the walls each in a mono colour scheme, the colour labelled in balls of dung that act as props for the paintings. At the end of the room is an elephant “Mono Oro”. The room evokes a meditative atmosphere and the colours of the paintings create a sense of beauty that intermingle with Ofili’s signatory elephant dung. Chris Ofili’s paintings are for me about attraction and disgust – the boundaries between wanting and repulsion, the sacred and the profane.

African flag colours of red, black and green appear in the paintings that follow and illustrate romantic notions of love and paradise with equally idyllic titles, such as Afro Love and Unity (2002); Afro Sunrise (2002-2003); Triple Beam Dreamer (2001-2). Chris has even managed to get Tate Britain to fly an African flag from its roof, begging the question: How does he get elite institutions to accept these things? I’m sure I wouldn’t get away with writing “Shit” on the art establishment’s walls and flying a foreign flag from their roof, all with their blessing!

All these bright colours give way to restraint in more recent years, when Chris Ofili experiments with a limited palette of blue, dark blue and silver. The lighting in the Tate Gallery make them difficult to look at, but they are an interesting departure nevertheless.

In the final room, colour bursts upon the scene once again with large, bright paintings full of yellows, blues, oranges and purples and not a dot or rude, soft porn body part in sight. I think I liked this room the best; the paintings grand in scale and perfectly balanced in terms of colour.

It is a great exhibition to see and I recommend it, although I do wonder why it isn’t at Tate Modern rather than Tate Britain. It was also good for me for a more personal reason. I remember him as a student, when he was my tutor for a brief period of time. I noticed he was shy, slightly unsure of himself, but he’d managed to break through this with startling effect. During a tutorial, we briefly discussed my work – there wasn’t much to discuss, I hardly had anything to show him – he said, my artwork was too shy and needed much more development (very true), before going on to tell me a story about how his friend’s car had been stolen. I felt very entertained and charmed by his unassuming nature. He presents himself as an ordinary bloke and he is very disarming, which is why his artwork is always a surprise.

I recommend that you see his work if you can, or at least buy the book.

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