Counter Editions unveils official prints for Team GB at the Rio Olympic Games

Counter Editions has released the official prints for Team GB at the Rio Olympic Games, featuring artworks by Sam Taylor-Johnson, Howard Hodgkin, Tracey Emin, David Shrigley, Anne Hardy, Sarah Jones, Eddie Peake and Benjamin Senior. The eight artists were asked to create unique images in celebration of Rio and Brazil, inspired by the British Olympic team.

Some of the artworks capture the tense energy of the sporting action, such as Benjamin Senior’s op-art lithograph of swimmers, Stroke Tempo, and Eddie Peake’s typographical screenprint Sweat. Others draw from the location, such as Emin’s emphatic True Love Always Wins depicting the host city’s iconic Christ the Redeemer; and Hodgkin’s The Road to Rio which uses Brazil’s flag colours. David Shrigley’s Life is Fantastic adds some humour to the mix with an Olympic torch that looks uncannily like an ice cream cone.

The series follows on from Counter Editions’ official prints for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which in turn revived a tradition started in 1912 for releasing artworks to celebrate the Games. The 2012 prints were created by a line-up including Bridget Riley, Martin Creed and Bob and Roberta Smith, as well as Emin and Hodgkin who return for this series.