We are pleased to announce October Gallery’s participation at the 7th edition of Cape Town Art Fair, 2019. The gallery will present works at Booth C14 by artists El Anatsui, Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga, Alexis Peskine and LR Vandy. The Gallery will reveal exciting new works created by Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga and LR Vandy especially for the fair.
Alexis Peskine continues to gain global recognition for his powerful nails pieces and photography. Peskine’s signature works are large-scale mixed media ‘portraits’ of those from the African diaspora, which are rendered by hammering gold leafed nails of different gauge, with pin-point accuracy, into treated wooden planks to create breath-taking composite images. The use of metal hammered into wood as a primary medium makes conscious reference to the Minkisi “power figures” of the Congo Basin: spiritually charged objects whose traditional function was to protect and ward off evil spirits. This year Peskine’s works were included in museum exhibitions internationally, most recently In Their Own Form held at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga explores the seismic shifts in the economic, political and social identity of the DRC that have taken place since colonialism. Increasingly globalised, there is a sense in the DRC that some of its people are rejecting its heritage, a conflict that fuels Kamuanga Ilunga’s work. A rising star, Kamuanga Ilunga continues to enthrall the imagination of the contemporary art world. The twenty-seven-year old artist had his first solo exhibition at October Gallery in 2016, which was followed two years later by Fragile Responsibility. His large scale figurative compositions possess a depth of historical understanding, with a striking and sophisticated interplay of the intensity of space juxtaposed with emptiness. His works combine two and three dimensional qualities, with wax cloth exquisitely painted. The haunting paintings provide an imaginative forum where centuries-old traditions encounter mass-communication technologies in a compelling meeting of opposites.
LR Vandy’s work made its sell-out debut in London this autumn at 1-54. The artist will have her highly anticipated first solo show at October Gallery in May 2019. In her sculptures, LR Vandy brings together both found and made objects in order to create new meaning. The artist’s ‘Hull’ series of sculptures takes model boat hulls adorned with fishing floats, porcupine quills and acupuncture needles. When mounted on to the wall they resemble masks.
Vandy transforms the perception of the hull for the viewer. The artist takes the part of the boat which would normally be covered by water and makes them visible. The forms of the hulls allude to the transportation as well as migration of people, but as masks they present a transformation of identity, drawing upon the tradition of talismans, charms and amulets.
The overall forms draw together these opposing forces; alluring and seemingly decorative pieces that on closer inspection provoke a sense of danger. Pushing aside the glamour and romance associated with travel, Vandy reveals an underbelly of indentured labour of groups of people as well as the perilous journeys endured by migrants.
October Gallery will present prints from El Anatsui’s Benchmarks series, editions of which are currently on display in Zeitz MOCAA. This exciting body of print works were created in collaboration with Factum Arte, an extraordinary studio based in Madrid best known for its synergy of past, present and future techniques.
Though globally-renowned for his iconic hangings of aluminium bottle-tops, Anatsui’s artistic practice has always been rooted in the discovery of new media. Anatsui’s metal wall sculptures are worked on by a team of assistants who crush, fold and pierce the bottle-tops on tables and on smaller flats of wood. The repetitive and relentless force exerted on these surfaces over many years has resulted in a landscape of textured relief embedded in the worktops. These wooden surfaces together with some bottle-top off-cuts and cassava graters that had been used in earlier works, serve as the primary source materials for this series of prints. Benchmarks print project indicates just some of the many new directions being explored in this ever-expanding oeuvre.
Notes to Editors Biographies of artists exhibited by October Gallery, London:
Born in 1979, Paris, France, Alexis Peskine lives and works between Paris and Dakar. Alexis Peskine holds a BFA from Howard University, Washington, DC, an MA in Digital Arts from MICA, Baltimore, MD, and when awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship in 2004, he completed a further MFA Degree at MICA. Building on his heritage and personal experiences, Peskine’s reliefs and photography focus on the complexity of themes impacting people from the African Diaspora. Peskine’s work is thematically linked to the Black Experience and has been featured in many publications from books, to newspapers - such as the New York Times, Le Monde, O Correio da Bahia and Libération. In 2018, Peskine’s work The Raft of the Medusa (Saint-Louis), 2016, was featured in Cry for Victory and Short Walk to Freedom at Projects+Gallery, and The Kranzberg Center of Arts, St Louis and works by the artist were presented by the University of Palermo and New York University as part of Black Mediterranean: ReSignifications at Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa, Palermo, Sicily.
For the 2018 edition of AKAA, Paris, October Gallery presented a successful solo booth of works by the artist.
Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1991, Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga studied painting at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa. While the strict, almost 19th-century style of formal figuration that has been taught at the Académie since its colonial-era founding allowed the artist to develop sophisticated painterly skills, ultimately, he found its program conceptually stifling, and abandoned his studies there, in 2011. He quickly aligned himself with other artists to establish M’Pongo, a group studio where a diverse set of young artists shared ideas and exhibited together to generate their own vibrant scene, which tapped into the high-energy creativity of contemporary Kinshasa. Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga was long-listed for the FT/Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Awards 2016 and in 2017 his work was included in the exhibitions African-Print Fashion Now! at the Fowler Museum, UCLA (touring) and in the 249th Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. In 2018, Kamuanga Ilunga’s work was exhibited as part of Congo Stars at Kunsthaus Graz, Austria. Illustrating his important place within the contemporary African art canon, paintings by Kamuanga Ilunga are part of the Zeitz Collection of Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa.
Born in 1958, in Britain of Irish and Nigerian descent, LR Vandy studied Graphic Design & Printmaking at Camberwell College of Arts before completing her Master’s Degree in Furniture Design at the Royal College of Art. LR Vandy’s work European, 2015, was recently acquired by the British Museum. LR Vandy’s work made its public debut at the 2018 edition of 1-54, London, a stellar success. In May 2019, October Gallery will present the artist’s first solo show.
El Anatsui was born in Ghana in 1944. He studied Art at University in Kumasi, Ghana, before moving to Nigeria where he has lived and worked since 1975. El Anatsui held the post of Professor of Sculpture at the University of Nsukka until his retirement in 2011. Throughout a distinguished career as both an artist and teacher, El Anatsui has addressed a wide range of social, political and historical concerns and embraced an equally diverse range of media and processes. In 2013, one of his largest metal wall-hangings to utilize his bottle-top technique, TSIATSIA – searching for connection, adorned the façade of Burlington House. Created to coincide with the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2013, this remarkable work won the prestigious Charles Wollaston Award that year. This year, TSIATSIA – searching for connection, 2013, will be installed at Zeitz MOCAA.
In 2014, El Anatsui was made an Honorary Royal Academician as well as elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2015 he was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia – All the World’s Futures and in 2016 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Cape Town. In 2017, he was awarded the prestigious Praemium Imperiale Award for Sculpture.
El Anatsui has been represented by October Gallery since 1993. The artist’s most recent exhibitions with October Gallery include “Benchmarks: New Prints by El Anatsui” in 2017 and “El Anatsui: New Works” in 2016.
El Anatsui’s sculptures have been collected by major international museums including the British Museum, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the de Young Museum, San Francisco; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi; Osaka Foundation of Culture, Osaka; the National Museum of African Art Smithsonian, Washington D.C., and many other prestigious institutions.
