London 2012 – Olympic Posters Exhibition A collection of specially commissioned prints by twelve leading UK artists to celebrate the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games

Anthea Hamilton

• Divers, 2011
• Screenprint
• 76 x 60cm

Hamilton was born in 1978 in London and graduated from Leeds Metropolitan University in 2000. Hamilton’s work centres on the juxtaposition of everyday objects in order to create a narrative. Through the play and interaction of cut out shapes and unexpected items, Hamilton’s work has a surrealist quality. The space in which her pieces are displayed are also an important consideration where the artist will tailor each piece to work within the framework in a way to force interaction with the viewer. Shapes and colour palettes used by artists such as Leger or Picasso have also provided inspiration and Hamilton is keen that the construction is laid bare to the viewer, such as her use of clamps for example. Most recently Hamilton has completed a residency at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and has had solo shows at Chisenhale Gallery, London and IBID Projects, London. She currently lives and works in London.

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Bridget Riley

• Rose Rose, 2011
• Screenprint
• 87 x 69.5 cm

Bridget Riley was born in London, and spent the war years living in Cornwall. After a spasmodic start to her education, she returned to London to study at Goldsmiths College, graduating to the Royal College of Art in 1952. Her approach to painting was slow to evolve and it was not until 1960 that she made her first essays into optical painting during visits to Spain and Italy. All her paintings of the early 1960s were in black and white. Riley quickly developed a style comprising regular patterns of line and colour which cover the entire surface of the painting and appear to shift and vibrate while they are in fact static and rigid. Colour was introduced in 1966, first as warmer and cooler greys, then as vivid contrasting pairs such as red and turquoise. The artist described these works as being concerned with principles of 'repose and disturbance'. In 1968 Riley represented Britain at the 1968 Venice Biennale and became the first woman to win the International Painting prize. Since then Riley has exhibited extensively both in the UK and internationally.

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Chris Ofili

• For the Unknown Runner, 2011
• Lithograph
• 76 x 60cm

Chris Ofili was born in Manchester in 1968 and studied at Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art before coming into prominence in the early 1990s with his densely orchestrated paintings. These early works consisted of intricately applied dots of paint, map pins, found images, glitter and varnished elephant dung which also acted as a support for the canvas. Within the seduction of the detail, Ofili’s paintings examined the notion of beauty, black culture and history. His more recent work has seen Ofili explore his subjects through sculpture and painting in a more pared-down style, but still focussed on the figurative form. He won the Turner prize in 1998 and represented Britain at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. Ofili has exhibited in many international institutions over the past decade including an extensive retrospective of his work at Tate Britain in 2010. Ofili now lives and works in Trinidad.

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Howard Hodgkin

• Swimming, 2011
• Screenprint
• 76 x 60cm

Howard Hodgkin was born in 1932 in London, the son of a prominent artistic family. He studied at Camberwell College of Art and later at Bath Academy of Arts, where he returned later as a teacher. Hodgkin's pictures of friends and places attempt to capture the abstract qualities of a particular time, place and area and to make permanent in pictorial form the impermanence of feeling. Close friends and passionate moments are the subjects of his work - artists he admires, the landscape of India he came to know well or the particular flavour or after-taste of an affair. Hodgkin’s work can be immediately identifiable and early on in his career his layered and textured surfaces in lush colours begun to break beyond the confines of their frames, blurring boundaries creating an object of the painting. Later in his career Hodgkin’s work took on a more gestural and fluid form. Each brushstroke is extremely considered with works often taking years to produce. He served as a Trustee of the Tate Gallery and of the National Gallery, London. His work was shown in the British Pavilion at the 1984 Venice Biennale and then he went on to win the Turner Prize the subsequent year. He was knighted in 1992.

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Martin Creed

• Work No. 1273
• Lithograph
• 76 x 60cm

Martin Creed was born in 1968 in Wakefield, in the north of England, his family relocating to Glasgow, Scotland when he was three years old. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London from 1986 - 90, then lived and worked in London from 1990 - 2001, during which time he also extended his practice into musical composition with his group project OWADA. Creed moved to Alicudi, Italy in 2001 and now lives and works both there and in London. Martin Creed’s work is concerned with the tension between something and nothing, with what exactly constitutes an artwork, and the value of that work in relation to the world around it. Everything Creed makes is assigned a work number and then catalogued; from interventional objects to writing, songs and interviews. The number system is often assigned in a non-linear fashion and never re-used again. Creed was the Turner Prize winner at Tate Britain in 2001 and has exhibited widely, with recent solo exhibitions including Tate Liverpool in 2012 and Museo d'Arte Contemporánea de Vigo in 2011.

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Rachel Whiteread

• LOndOn 2O12, 2011
• Screenprint
• 76 x 60cm

Whiteread was born in London and studied painting at Brighton Polytechnic from 1982-1985, and later sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, London from 1985-1987. She participated in the DAAD Artist's Programme, Berlin in 1992 and was awarded the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery, London in 1993. In 1997 she represented Britain at the XLVII Venice Biennale. Whiteread casts directly from the negative space around and inside familiar utilitarian objects using plaster, resin and rubber. What remains is a reminder, ephemeral space and time made solid and tangible. Her work traces memory and absence, the cast sculptures bearing evidence of the original object; colour from wallpaper seeping into casting plaster, or imperfections in the underside of a cast iron bath tub faithfully recorded in resin. In addition to her sculpture, Whiteread uses photography as part of her practice: photographs of structures, buildings under construction or demolition, furniture abandoned in the street, empty rooms. She has also received many major public commissions, including the Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, and most recently a permanent artwork for the exterior of the Whitechapel Gallery in London.

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Michael Craig-Martin

• GO, 2011
• Screenprint
• 76 x 60cm

Craig-Martin was born in Dublin, Ireland and from 1939-45 lived in London and Wales. In 1945 his family relocated to Washington D.C. In 1961 he studied painting at Yale University and returned a year later as a post-graduate student. He then returned to London where he continues to live and work. His early work drew together a variety of everyday objects and materials exploring the nature of art and representation. Craig-Martin’s now familiar style consists of crisp outlines of his signature objects varying in media from large scale wall installations made using crepe tape, neon, paint, site specific environments and, most recently, computer animations. Craig-Martin is also highly regarded for his influential teaching and his thinking is widely credited as the formative grounding for many young British artists, whose work defined British art of the 1990s such as Damien Hirst, Gary Hume and Sarah Lucas. He has also curated many exhibitions, including Drawing the Line in 1995 and the British Council show Passports in 2009 both shown at Whitechapel Gallery. He represented Britain at the Sao Paulo Bienal in 1998 and was made CBE in 2001.

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Gary Hume

• Capital, 2011
• Screenprint
• 76 x 60cm

Gary Hume was born in Kent in 1962 and studied at Liverpool Polytechnic and Goldsmiths College in London. In 1996 he was short listed for the Turner Prize and his work was shown at the São Paulo Bienal. The following year he was awarded the Jerwood Prize for Painting and in 1999 represented Britain with a solo exhibition in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for which he produced a series of large scale overlapping line drawings of nudes entitled Water Paintings. Hume is best known for his paintings of bright, flat colour combinations, which he produces using household gloss paint. He came to prominence in the early 1990s with a series of works known as Door paintings, simplified images of hospital doors in highly reflective gloss paint. He then expanded his subject matter to include other motifs such as the portrait, the nude, and cheerleaders. In Hume's portraits in particular, his interests in popular culture are shown by his choice of subjects such as the fashion model Kate Moss. In 2012, Gary Hume exhibited his first solo show for 4 years at White Cube where his interest in nature and its indifference has inspired his latest body of work. Hume lives and works in London and upstate New York, USA.

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Bob and Roberta Smith

• Love, 2011
• Screenprint
• 76 x 60cm

Bob and Roberta Smith is the adopted persona of the artist Patrick Brill. Born in London in 1963, he studied Fine Art at the University of Reading and later at Goldsmiths College, London. Bob and Roberta Smith lives and works in London. Smith's work spans a variety of genres; painting, performance, music and even cookery and Do-It-Yourself, infused with a subversive humour. By combining such diverse media with the language styles of alternative protest movements, folk and punk, Bob and Roberta Smith attempts to challenge established authorities and values, and encourage creativity in people. Many past projects and performances have involved participatory elements, sharing similarities with the Fluxus movement of the 1960s.

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Fiona Banner

• Superhuman Nude, 2011
• Inkjet
• 76 x 60cm

Fiona Banner was born in Liverpool and studied at Kingston Polytechnic and later at Goldsmiths College in London. She re-fictionalises actual or filmed occurrences creating a form of 'wordscape', in which entire films, scenes and sequences are retold literally in her own words. Hours of action are distilled into a single block of text - typeset, hand-written or illustrated in the style of an intense storyboard. The format of the text is suggested by the content of the subject matter, and at times is blurred to suggest intense moments of drama, or positioned to invoke car chases or shoot outs. Fighter planes have also been a heavy focus in Banner’s work, from pencil drawings, to a collection of Airfix models. In 2010, Banner presented two decommissioned fighter jets in the Duveen Gallery of Tate Britain as figures which represented the ‘opposite of language’.

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Tracey Emin

• Birds 2012, 2011
• Lithograph
• 76 x 60cm

Tracey Emin was born in 1963 in London and brought up in Margate on the South East Coast of England. She studied at Maidstone College of Art and later at the Royal College of Art in London. She talks frequently and without irony about her soul. In this she is unique among her peers. Like Egon Schiele and Frida Kahlo whom she much admires, her subject is herself: the traumatic episodes and periods of despair in her past, and a revelatory, stream of consciousness expose the darker moments of her present. Her work represents an act of unsqueamish honesty, which seems to be a point of honour for the artist. Highly narrative, trading in overt and sometimes mawkish sentimentality, her work also has an explicit sexuality which contravenes all traditional codes of feminine behaviour. Her choice of media: the embroidery, quilt making, and diary-like narratives however, could be seen as consistent with 19th Century models of female accomplishment. Emin most recently had a solo show entitled ‘Love is What You Want’ at the Hayward Gallery, London in 2011. In 2007 Emin represented Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale, was made a Royal Academician and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London, a Doctor of Letters from the University of Kent and Doctor of Philosophy from London Metropolitan University. She lives and works in London.

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Sarah Morris

• Big Ben 2012, 2011
• Screenprint
• 76 x 60cm

Sarah Morris is an American artist born in the UK in 1967 who studied at Brown University, Rhode Island, USA and at the University of Cambridge. Morris is a painter and filmmaker who takes urban architecture as her starting point. Her painted work is based on graphically reduced details of building facades as structural all-over linear grids, and is informed by an interest in signs and the de-coding of the built environment. Using household gloss, Morris creates graphic abstractions often vivid in colour to disorientating effect and she herself has likened her paintings to that of Venn Diagrams, which are overlapping circle diagrams used to indicate relationships. Her films work in parallel to her paintings sometimes documentary in feel or as a staged narrative. She lives and works in New York and London.