This weekend I visited Chris Ofili at the Tate Britain. Ofili’s work in the first few rooms (in fact all of them except the final three) was beautifully produced, decorative and reminded  me of textile prints.

I watched people, how they interacted with the work and many eagerly leant forwards to explore the tiny collaged pieces and the layers of polyester resin. Eagerly leant forward; and then eagerly retreated back into the safer zone at least a meter from the painting surface. Having the canvases sitting on the poo blocks really did drive home the concept of the paintings coming from the earth but after looking at the first ten works, I started to wonder if Ofili ever got bored of this technique.

Ofili definitely moved on and this was evident in the last three rooms of the exhibition. The Afromuses were exquisite and beautifully formed. As a series they worked communicating his enjoyment of working with the physicality of material aswell as exploring the versitility of character portrayal.  They shone like liquid jewels, seeping between the glass and the edges of the paper. Alive. The series acted like an army of luxurious form, liquidity and deep colour.

The Blue Rider series. Soft, velvet and moonlit. They reminded me of how I felt when I saw my first Anish Kapoor sculpture - Adam, I stared into what I knew to be a flat plain but which had opened itself to reveal a shifting, edgey world of cool silvery tones. A series of portals.

Finally I entered the room of recent work where the Trinidad colour explodes into scenes of mythological folk law. I immediately thought of Doig and I was excited. Unlike his earlier work, the glitter was absent. The paintings were large scale, figurative and clearly a step forward from his previous work.

These final paintings have a magical, glittering vibrancy – without the use of actual glitter. They are deep-rooted to the earth, they deal with spiritual quests and provoke a shift for the perceptive viewer. They are a celebration of culture, colour, identity and nature. And there is no poo in sight.