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Julian Opie / People walking. Coloured 2008/2022 / Continuous computer animation on light-emitting-diode (LED) screen, wall mounted / Purchased 2009 with funds from the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Julian Opie / Image courtesy: The artist and Lisson Gallery, London
Julian OPIEPeople walking. Coloured 2008
On Display: GOMA, Foyer
People walking. Coloured 2008 belongs to an ongoing series of large-scale LED (light-emitting diode) works employing a high degree of abstraction and abbreviation to produce a figurative image. The technology used to display the work is similar to the large LED screens used for stadium televisions.
Julian Opie has often employed commercial and industrial media in his artworks and his use of LEDs is motivated by the increasing prevalence of this technology in the public sphere – for applications from traffic lights through to public signage.
The figures in the work are depicted with an extremely restrained and limited amount of pictorial information; each is literally faceless and dressed in generic outfits suggestive of an affluent, contemporary Western city. Curiously, however, Opie has given very careful consideration to each figure’s gait and posture, giving them a highly individual and strangely life-like quality.
The flow of people across the screen has no discernible beginning or end, creating a hypnotic rhythm suggestive of the endless flow of people in contemporary cities. While the work is obviously presenting an artificial version of reality, it nonetheless feels very closely connected to actual human subjects.
Julian Opie is renowned for his highly simplified visual language employed across a broad range of art forms including printmaking, sculpture, painting, installation and animation. He has also been active in the broader cultural sphere, especially via his collaborations with UK musicians Blur, St Etienne and U2 on album artwork and stage sets.
Discussion Questions
Opie’s mesmerising portrait of strangers forever in motion presents an idealised picture of human encounters. How does this artwork invite viewers to reflect on their own relationships, expectations and behaviours?
Classroom Activities
These ‘smoothed out’ people with their round, white heads are generically formed that they suggest an unsettling kind of sameness, an ironing out of difference, body type or character. Analysing the visual techniques used by Julian Opie, create your own artwork using a medium of choice to comment on the impact of sameness.