Anthony Sattin’s much anticipated book is now published, and an official launch will take place at October Gallery on 26th May. The inspiration for the gallery's current exhibition Nomadic Resonance, this is a ground-breaking story of nomadic peoples on the move across history, from one of the major influences on travel writing today.

London Gallery Weekend, the free public event which celebrates art galleries in the UK capital, returns bigger than ever this year, with over 150 participating galleries announced for its new edition. October Gallery is open across the three days and from 10am until 8pm on Friday, 13th May. The gallery will be open on Saturday, 11am to 6pm and on Sunday, 11am to 5pm.

For London Gallery Weekend, October Gallery is pleased to announce the first launch in the UK of El Anatsui. The Reinvention of Sculpture by Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu on Friday, 13th May, 6-8 pm, with a presentation by co-author Chika Okeke-Agulu taking place at 7 pm. The launch celebrates the work of El Anatsui and coincides with the gallery’s exhibition Nomadic Resonance, that includes a new large-scale work by the artist. Chika Okeke-Agulu will be available to sign copies of the book after the presentation.

Written by two acclaimed scholars Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, El Anatsui. The Reinvention of Sculpture, is the product of more than three decades of research, a comprehensive, incisive and authoritative account of the work of El Anatsui, the world-renowned, Ghanaian-born sculptor.

Published by Damiani, this book shows why his early wood reliefs and terracottas, and the later monumental metal sculptures, exemplify an innovative, critical search for alternative models of art-making. El Anatsui: The Reinvention of Sculpture places Anatsui’s work within a broader historical context, specifically the postcolonial modernism of mid-twentieth-century African artists and writers, the cultural ferment of post-independence Ghana, as well as within the intellectual environment of the 1970s Nsukka School.

By recovering these histories, and subjecting his work to vigorous analysis, the authors show how and why Anatsui became one of the most formidable sculptors of our time.

To mark the closing of the exhibition Aubrey Williams: Sunphase - Works on Paper October Gallery will hold two screenings of Mark of the Hand

This remarkable film follows the artist , Aubrey Williams as he returns to his birthplace of Georgetown, Guyana’s capital city. After restoring one of his murals at Timehri International Airport, the artist travels on to Hosororo, in the depths of the rainforest, returning for the first time, in forty years, to visit the Warrau people who originally inspired him to follow his lifelong path as an artist. That once arduous days-long journey through deep forest by canoe and track has since become a forty-five minute hop by plane, and the film traces the course of that surprisingly emotional return.

Aubrey Williams was born in Guyana, on the Caribbean coast of South America, in 1926. His early interest in painting was influenced by E.R. Burrows and the Working Peoples’ Art group, still a unique development in the English-speaking Caribbean. He trained as an agricultural officer, working as liaison between the Demerara Sugar Company and local farm labourers. After championing the famers rights, he was sent far away to Hosororo, in the north-west of the country, to manage an experimental agricultural station. Deep in the jungle, where magnificent rivers provided the only means of travel, he lived among the Amerindian inhabitants, the Warrau. There he encountered pre-Colombian art in the form of rock paintings or timehri, an Arawak word that actually translates as “the mark of the hand”. Those experiences were decisive in forming his identity as a painter and remained a constantly creative source which he continued to explore in his later paintings. Williams arrived in England to study agricultural engineering, in 1952. He soon abandoned his studies to devote himself fully to painting. He attended St. Martins School of Art and became associated with the radical New Vision Centre Gallery, and began to exhibit more widely from 1954 onward. Today his work is exhibited internationally. Living in England between 1952 and 1990, he talked of his sense of living in an 'aesthetic desert' and, as a black artist, being overlooked by most art critics. Despite his involvement with European avant-garde art, he remained a distinctly Caribbean artist, drawing on the myths of pre-Columbian culture and the Guyanaese landscape as subjects to inform his artistic vision.