Juxtapoz Magazine – The Storytellers @ Gallery 1957, London

Gallery 1957 is proud to existing The Storytellers a group show that includes new operates 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 clearly show runs at Gallery 1957 London from the 26th Could – 9th July 2022.

The art of storytelling operates deep in any society. Even just before the penned term, the oral tradition of telling tales and encounters to one’s local community was a way to develop solidarity amongst a given individuals, give assistance and inspiration. It was an intrinsic factor of traditional existence. Working with gestures and impersonations, a learn storyteller would expose to the audience crucial facets of heritage, everyday lifetime and the latest events, celebrating heroism, failures, really like and victories – all with the component of teaching and commemorating essential times from a society’s shared heritage. It was a way to protect one’s heritage, collective and personalized id.

Who are the storytellers currently and how do they notify their tales? The functions in the group show The Storytellers, which characteristics new do the job by 13 artists doing work across the globe, demonstrate how today’s storytellers are also artists. They inform stories by way of visible depictions in both abstract and reasonable sort, relaying to the audience not only a private or collective tale in time, but the psychological practical experience gone through for the duration of that moment. The tales that are portrayed below are those people that the artist tells their family, pals and public and the encounters preserved through their art conjure up reminiscences of fears, yearnings, joy and loss. The artist storytellers whose get the job done is presented in this exhibition depict a drive and want to document and maintain on to modern lifestyle in flux, all through a time of good adjust. 

Their poignant portrayals, the majority of which are carried out on canvas with a several in multimedia, tell tales of profound particular and collective reflection as a result of sensible depictions akin to pictures on their own, while in some others by means of abstract and expressionistic portrayals that provide to showcase heightened emotional states encompassing a particular celebration or unique. In some cases, like in the function of Sudanese Salah Elmur, recognised for his endearing painted depictions of figures normally from his childhood, storytelling is about remembering personal and public anecdotes about particular times in time. Meanwhile, diaspora artists such as Patrick Alston, operating in the United States reveals his tales as a result of edgy abstract canvases and that of Brazilian Gustavo Nazareno is motivated by Afro-Brazilian religions that carry on to be practiced today and Tiffanie Delune’s transfixing abstract canvases that task her personal trauma and childhood experiences as if trying to recover, discover and educate a thing in the course of action of telling these tales. In Lauren Pearce’s substantial multi-media works and outside murals, produced in vivid colors and which render at times portraits and other occasions abstracted topics explore her identity and group. Last of all, Nadia Waheed’s work examines storytelling in a international and multicultural dialogue – significantly consultant of the artist herself who was born to Pakistani mothers and fathers in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia and lived and practiced in France, Egypt, Pakistan and now the US. Waheed now takes advantage of her world wide exposure to lay bare the intricacies of her woman id by means of significant-scale allegorical figurative paintings, telling tales as an company to connect with herself and the wider earth. 

The artists offered in the exhibition The Storytellers do exactly this. The breadth of artistry on exhibit in this group display testifies to the a lot of modern artists now operating out of Ghana in a variety of models and mediums. From Afia Prempeh’s haunting sensible portrayals of Ghanaian women with their heightened notice to element to Annan Affotey’s piercing portraits of Ghana’s men and women Serge Attukwei Clottey’s poignant abstract expressionist paintings with their potent figures Yaw Owusu’s striking and scintillating blended-media ensembles that glimpse to demarcate Ghana’s social and political systems Godfried Donkor’s meticulously rendered figures that take a look at the socio-historic relationships concerning West Africa and Europe Arthur Timothy, whose reasonable canvases relay private and collective recollections surrounding significant activities having place about the time of Ghana’s independence and Joshua Oheneba-Takyi, a young Ghanaian painter whose storytelling can be uncovered in the way he merges abstract and realism – leaving the narration of each individual canvas in just the subjective realm and open to the spectator’s very own tips of what tales he is making an attempt to tell.  

The artists in this present document by way of their functions the vibrant mosaic of their personal assorted modern day culture and earlier histories, resurrecting the every day particular person and his and her stories to a regional and global viewers.