JULIAN OPIE, WALKING IN THE RAIN, LONDON, WALKING IN THE RAIN SERIES, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT, EDITION OF 50, 2015
Walking In The Rain, London is a print from Julian Opie’s Walking In The Rain series (2015) that shows a series of full-length profiles of people walking across the image in varying directions. As with many of Opie’s depictions of people, each figure is rendered faceless with a blank circle as a head. Despite this, these people are uniquely distinguishable due to Opie’s attention to detail with clothing and each person’s stance or gate.
Opie’s attention to detail and depiction of the mundane works to perfectly capture contemporary life in London and create a highly recognisable image. A woman’s Tesco bag, a figure slumping in a thick coat and a multitude of earphones and mobile phones, Opie depicts what the British viewer sees everyday so as to question how we observe the world.
This print is dynamic in its all-over composition, the umbrellas layered and striding figures creating a sense of movement. Opie created this print by filming people walking on the streets of London, taking still photos of passers-by in the rain and gathering the images together to create a frieze of passing people. Walking in the Rain, London cleverly conveys the fast paced nature of a view on a city street corner and the variety of personalities that make up London.
Read more about Walking In The Rain by Julian Opie.
ABOUT JULIAN OPIE
British artist Julian Opie challenges traditional approaches to portraiture through his digitally designed and seemingly contradictory, depersonalised works. Working also with landscapes and cityscapes, Opie’s highly stylised work involves the reduction of photographs or short films into figurative reproductions created using computer software. The hallmarks of his artistic style are portraits and animated walking figures, rendered with minimal detail in black line drawing. Learn more about Julian Opie.
