Juxtapoz Magazine – The Storytellers @ Gallery 1957, London

Gallery 1957 is happy to current The Storytellers a group present showcasing new is effective by: Annan Affotey, Patrick Alston, Serge Attukwei Clottey, Tiffanie Delune, Godfried Donkor, Salah Elmur, Gustavo Nazareno, Joshua Oheneba-Takyi, Yaw Owusu, Lauren Pearce, Afia Prempeh, Arthur Timothy, and Nadia Waheed. The show operates at Gallery 1957 London from the 26th May – 9th July 2022.

The artwork of storytelling operates deep in any modern society. Even before the composed phrase, the oral custom of telling tales and experiences to one’s community was a way to make solidarity amid a supplied people, present guidance and inspiration. It was an intrinsic facet of common existence. Making use of gestures and impersonations, a grasp storyteller would expose to the viewers crucial elements of history, every day daily life and current activities, celebrating heroism, failures, like and victories – all with the part of instructing and commemorating essential times from a society’s shared history. It was a way to protect one’s record, collective and personalized identity.

Who are the storytellers these days and how do they explain to their tales? The functions in the group show The Storytellers, which features new perform by 13 artists performing across the world, display how today’s storytellers are also artists. They explain to tales by way of visible depictions in each abstract and reasonable sort, relaying to the viewers not only a own or collective tale in time, but the psychological working experience undergone through that minute. The tales that are portrayed in this article are those people that the artist tells their loved ones, pals and public and the activities preserved by their art conjure up reminiscences of fears, yearnings, pleasure and reduction. The artist storytellers whose function is introduced in this exhibition depict a want and need to doc and maintain on to modern lifestyle in flux, through a time of good change. 

Their poignant portrayals, the bulk of which are finished on canvas with a couple of in multimedia, convey to tales of profound particular and collective reflection through practical depictions akin to photos them selves, when in other individuals by way of abstract and expressionistic portrayals that serve to showcase heightened psychological states surrounding a distinct party or particular person. In some scenarios, like in the do the job of Sudanese Salah Elmur, acknowledged for his endearing painted depictions of figures typically from his childhood, storytelling is about remembering individual and public anecdotes about distinct moments in time. In the meantime, diaspora artists such as Patrick Alston, operating in the United States reveals his tales by way of edgy abstract canvases and that of Brazilian Gustavo Nazareno is influenced by Afro-Brazilian religions that proceed to be practiced currently and Tiffanie Delune’s transfixing summary canvases that project her personal trauma and childhood ordeals as if striving to heal, discover and teach some thing in the system of telling these tales. In Lauren Pearce’s massive multi-media performs and outside murals, generated in lively colors and which render at times portraits and other situations abstracted topics discover her identity and community. Lastly, Nadia Waheed’s function examines storytelling in a worldwide and multicultural dialogue – substantially agent of the artist herself who was born to Pakistani mother and father in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia and lived and practiced in France, Egypt, Pakistan and now the US. Waheed now utilizes her world exposure to lay bare the intricacies of her woman identity by substantial-scale allegorical figurative paintings, telling tales as an company to link with herself and the broader environment. 

The artists presented in the exhibition The Storytellers do precisely this. The breadth of artistry on screen in this group exhibit testifies to the many modern day artists now doing the job out of Ghana in a wide variety of models and mediums. From Afia Prempeh’s haunting realistic portrayals of Ghanaian women with their heightened focus to detail to Annan Affotey’s piercing portraits of Ghana’s gentlemen and women Serge Attukwei Clottey’s poignant abstract expressionist paintings with their highly effective figures Yaw Owusu’s putting and scintillating mixed-media ensembles that glimpse to demarcate Ghana’s social and political systems Godfried Donkor’s meticulously rendered figures that analyze the socio-historic associations concerning West Africa and Europe Arthur Timothy, whose practical canvases relay personalized and collective recollections encompassing vital gatherings having position about the time of Ghana’s independence and Joshua Oheneba-Takyi, a youthful Ghanaian painter whose storytelling can be discovered in the way he merges abstract and realism – leaving the narration of each individual canvas in the subjective realm and open up to the spectator’s individual ideas of what stories he is seeking to inform.  

The artists in this present document by their functions the vibrant mosaic of their have various modern culture and previous histories, resurrecting the every day individual and his and her stories to a regional and global audience.