About the work

Chantal Joffe has created a pair of new artists’ editions co-published by Whitechapel Gallery and Art on the Underground.   

As part of the Crossrail Art Programme and selected by Whitechapel Gallery, a series of portraits entitled A Sunday Afternoon in Whitechapel by London-based artist Chantal Joffe (b. 1969, UK) can be found across the newly opened Elizabeth Line platforms at Whitechapel station. Inspired by painters such as Matisse and Picasso, Joffe’s full series derive from 20 collaged cut-outs of passers-by captured by the artist one Sunday afternoon on Whitechapel High Street.

To celebrate the recent opening of London’s newest line. In an inaugural collaboration between Whitechapel Gallery and Art on the Underground, Joffe has selected two portraits from the series to be made available as special silkscreen prints.

About the artist

Chantal Joffe brings a combination of insight and integrity, as well as psychological and emotional force, to the genre of figurative art. Hers is a deceptively casual brushstroke. Whether in images a few inches square or ten feet high, fluidity combined with a pragmatic approach to representation seduces and disarms. Almost always depicting women or girls, sometimes in groups but recently in iconic portraits, Joffe’s paintings only waveringly adhere to their source – be it a photograph, magazine page or even a reflection in the mirror – instead reminding us that distortions of scale and form can often make a subject seem more real.

Born in 1969, the artist lives and works in London. She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and was awarded the Royal Academy Wollaston Prize in 2006. Joffe has exhibited nationally and internationally with venues including The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, USA (2022); The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (2021); The Foundling Museum, London, UK (2020); Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2020); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland (2019); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2018); The Lowry, Salford (2018); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2018, 2017); National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavík (2016); National Portrait Gallery, London (2015); Jewish Museum, New York (2015); Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (2015); Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2014 – 2015); Saatchi Gallery, London (2013 – 2014); MODEM, Hungary (2012); Turner Contemporary, Margate (2011); Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York (2009); MIMA Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (2007); Galleri KB, Oslo (2005) and Bloomberg Space, London (2004).

Her work is in numerous institutional and private collections, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Detroit Institute of Arts; National Portrait Gallery, London; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.