Wayfinder: Larry Achiampong & JMW Turner curated by Larry Achiampong

12 Mar-19 Jun 2022

Overview

The first major solo exhibition by British-Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong. The exhibition will include the newly commissioned feature-length film Wayfinder, which follows a young girl’s journey across England. Achiampong has also curated a display of paintings by JMW Turner and collaborated with Turner Contemporary to create a gaming room.

Wayfinder (2022) is Achiampong’s most ambitious film to date. Set in a pandemic, it follows the Wanderer, a young girl played by Perside Rodrigues, on an intrepid journey across England. Travelling from North to South, she passes through different regions, towns and landscapes, encountering people, stories and situations on her way. Across six chapters, including ‘The North’, ‘The Big Smoke’ and ‘The Kingdom of the East’, this epic film builds a dialogue about class and economic exclusion, belonging and displacement, cultural heritage and the meaning of home.

The Wanderer acts as a witness to accounts, conversations, places and histories. Setting out from the ancient paths of Hadrian’s Wall, she explores many environments, from a housing estate in Wolverhampton to E. Pellicci Café in Bethnal Green, and the National Gallery deserted at night, eventually reaching the sea at Margate.

The exhibition will also include the largest UK presentation of Achiampong’s Relic Traveller project (2017 – ongoing). This multi-disciplinary work envisages a pan-African alliance of travellers who explore landscapes of the near future, collecting testimonies of those who have been historically oppressed by colonialism, capitalism and globalisation. The installation will incorporate all five Relic films, Relic flags and a new series of life-size Relic Traveller figures (The Relic Travellers’ Alliance: Assembly 1 & 2, 2021).

Other works in film, sound and collage will also be included, such as Achiampong’s Glyth collages (2013 – ongoing). The faces of each black person in family photos have been replaced with cubist-like circles and red lips in these works, referencing experiences of racism growing up in East London, the Robertson’s Golliwog mascot still in circulation until 2002, and the Guy Fawkes mask from Alan Moore’s comic V For Vendetta.

Artists