The Last of Us, 2018
Blackboard paint and chalk on wooden board, installation view, Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, 2018. Photograph by Joe Sarah, courtesy of the artist and Copperfield, London.
Larry Achiampong
Larry Achiampong (born 1984) employs imagery, aural and visual archives, live performance and sound to explore ideas surrounding class, cross-cultural and post-digital identity. He works individually and collaboratively to examine constructions of ‘the self’ by splicing the audible and visual materials of personal and interpersonal archives, offering multiple perspectives that reveal entrenched socio-political contradictions in contemporary society. The works examine Achiampong’s communal and personal heritage, in particular the intersection between pop culture and the postcolonial position.
Achiampong’s most ambitious work to date, Relic Traveller, is a multi-disciplinary multi-site project that builds on themes of lost testimony, fallen empire and displacement by deconstructing the architectures of colonialism. The project is currently formed of two phases comprising original scores, four short films, installations, audio-visual performances and a flag project, elements of which have been displayed atop Somerset House in London, Frieze Sculpture Park, Singapore Biennale, Kunsthal Charlottenborg and as part of Transport for London’s Art on the Underground Westminster Station Commission.
Recent solo exhibitions and performances include Primary, Nottingham; Eastside Projects, Birmingham; Studio RCA, London; COPPERFIELD, London; Logan Center Exhibitions, Chicago; and Tate, London. Group exhibitions include Frieze Sculpture Park, London; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Prospect New Orleans, Louisiana, USA; and the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, Italy, 2017. He is currently artist in residence at Somerset House Studios, London.
