ArchiveExhibition

Inner Worlds, Outer Journeys: Ablade Glover at 90

4 Jul-3 Aug 2024
PV 3 Jul 2024, 6-8.30pm

October Gallery

London WC1N 3AL

Overview

In celebration of the artist’s 90th birthday, October Gallery is delighted to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Professor Ablade Glover. When we first showed his vibrant paintings, in 1982, Ablade Glover was the first artist from sub-Saharan Africa to exhibit at October Gallery. Since then, the Gallery has devoted ten solo shows to the colourful and always energetic canvases of this acclaimed master of oil-on-canvas painting. Glover’s latest show, Inner Worlds, Outer Journeys, traces an arc of development, which his younger self, setting out on a journey of inner and outer discoveries, might not have imagined he could ever achieve as part of the unfolding tapestry of an accomplished life in art.

In a career spanning more than seven decades, Ablade Glover’s many honours and distinctions underline his importance as artist, educator and curator both in Ghana and internationally. Not only by his teaching and mentoring, which have inspired generations of artists coming to the forefront today, but also by his continually developing practice as a painter, has Ablade Glover helped shape the current course and future pathways of Ghanaian art. Glover’s inimitable canvases celebrate, in vivid colours, the richly visual splendours of his native country. Using warm primary pigments, expressive of an intense solar heat, Glover depicts the vibrant scenes and spectacles playing out daily on the shimmering streets of Accra. He portrays the hidden spirit of the place – the energetic market stalls, the lorry parks, the brightly-attired crowds – by capturing the mesmeric movements of large numbers of people, each one pursuing their own individual goals and independent dependencies.

Artists

Ablade Glover

Ghanaian, b. 1934

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