Gary Hume creates paintings with distinctive colour palettes, reduced imagery, and rich surfaces. Hume has abstracted elements from an image of a wheelchair-tennis player, combining them with foliage and a soft and subtle colour palette.
The large, circular form represents the wheel of the wheelchair and the black tennis ball hangs suspended in space, with the tennis racquet poised to smash the ball across the net.
The large circular form can also be seen as a mouth cheering from the audience. Hume has created an aspirational image celebrating summer sport in London.
Since 1912, each Olympic host city has commissioned one or more posters to celebrate the hosting of the Games. Over the course of the last century a body of iconic work has been created and previous artists who have created a poster include David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and RB Kitaj.
