<h2>FREEDOM RISING: THE ART OF OWUSU-ANKOMAH</h2> 4 September – 4 October, 2025<h2>EL ANATSUI: 'Go Back and Pick'</h2> 9 October – 29 November, 2025.<h2>EL ANATSUI: 'Go Back and Pick'</h2> 9 October – 29 November, 2025.<h2>FREEDOM RISING: THE ART OF OWUSU-ANKOMAH</h2> 4 September – 4 October, 2025<h2>FREEDOM RISING: THE ART OF OWUSU-ANKOMAH</h2> 4 September – 4 October, 2025<h2>FREEDOM RISING: THE ART OF OWUSU-ANKOMAH</h2> 4 September – 4 October, 2025<h2>DREAM NO SMALL DREAM: The Story of October Gallery<br>Available from our Book Store. £40 + P&P</h2>304 pages, full colour plates throughout. Edited by Gerard Houghton.
 

CURRENT EXHIBITION

Freedom Rising: The Art of Owusu-Ankomah

4 September – 4 October, 2025
Owusu-Ankomah.
Photo: © Jonathan Greet, 2014.
Owusu-Ankomah, Microcron Begins No.19, 2013.
Acrylic on canvas, 180 x 280 cm.
Following the passing of the acclaimed artist Owusu-Ankomah in February of this year, October Gallery presents an exhibition of selected core works from 2008 – 2014.

Freedom Rising: The Art of Owusu-Ankomah comprises intriguing large-scale paintings on canvas which depict an alternative world abounding with symbols and monumental human figures. Reflecting the artist’s own spiritual journey, the way in which these figures interact with the surrounding symbols has developed through several distinct phases over time. When starting out, Owusu-Ankomah’s work drew largely on ancient African traditions of rock painting and masquerade, before his figures shed their masks and became mute actors afloat in an ocean of signs. Employing a studied trompe l’oeil effect, the powerful figures’ finely sculpted bodies are themselves covered in similarly painted glyphs. These cause the figures to melt into the background forest of signs, where the hidden figures move within a symbolic realm that surrounds, supports and inevitably defines them. Originally, the accompanying signs were all derived from the adinkra symbol set embodying the traditional wisdom of the Akan people of Owusu-Ankomah’s native Ghana. However, over time symbols from other sources and diverse cultures have also been added, including many novel glyphs devised by the artist himself.

Owusu-Ankomah writes: For me, these paintings are all about the power of freedom: freedom of movement, freedom of self-expression, both as individuals and societies. I compose my paintings using the expressive power of the symbols themselves, taking full account of their deeper meanings, ensuring both visual and conceptual harmonies exist between the forms and the overall themes explored on each canvas.

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FORTHCOMING EXHIBITION

EL ANATSUI: 'Go Back and Pick'

9 October – 29 November, 2025.
El Anatsui, Passage of Time, 2023.
Tropical hardwood and tempera, 244 x 244 cm.
Photos: Jonathan Greet
El Anatsui, Novisi, 2024.
Tropical hardwood and tempera, 159 x 376 cm.

October Gallery and Goodman Gallery London are proud to present ‘Go Back and Pick’, an exhibition in two parts by El Anatsui, widely regarded as one of the most influential contemporary artists working today. Anatsui’s new wooden sculptures mark a significant moment in his artistic trajectory, evolving from his foundational use of the medium during the 1980s and 1990s. These twin exhibitions of Anatsui’s most recent work underscore his major presence in the much-anticipated Nigerian Modernism exhibition at Tate Modern, opening 8th October, 2025.

El Anatsui’s internationally renowned sculptural practice continues to challenge the way we look at sculpture today. In the London exhibitions, his focus is on wood, his original and primary material. ‘Go Back and Pick’ presents a new series of wall-mounted sculptures, which evolve from the planar wooden reliefs that characterised his art in the 1980s and 1990s.

From the outset, Anatsui has always insisted on what he calls “the unfixed form”, the broad range of freedoms to be discovered in his sculpture. The modular nature and flexibility of the panel pieces allow for a range of spatially adaptive reconfigurations to the hanging sequence. Rather than having a fixed and final form, each panel piece can be rearranged at will to offer alternative combinations. As renowned scholars Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu note, “the form-shape and surface-colour compositions are potentially free to be manipulated […] uninhibited by whatever might have been the artist’s original composition.”


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RECENT EXHIBITIONS

Education Exhibition. Beyond the Weave: Crafting Tradition, Sparking Play

30 July – 2 August 2025
Curated by the OG Youth Collective, the exhibition Beyond the Weave: Crafting Tradition, Sparking Play, will include work from contributors across the Education programme, including Primary, Secondary and Special Educational Needs schools, Hospital Schools, Creative Youth Groups and Artist Educators. Furthermore, featuring work by guest artist ZOUBIDA, founded by creative Sophia Kacimi.

The exhibition will explore the intersection of art and craft. Each work provides a playful response to tradition through experimental making that engages the senses. Tapping into the histories of traditional crafts framed within a contemporary context, these pieces reveal a synergy between the individual and the collective.

The concept of ‘Beyond the Weave' will be central to the exhibition, visually manifesting as a wooden pole around which visitors can strap-weave recycled fabric strips, working alone or in pairs. As the show unfolds, these strips will build into ever-growing braids, offering a living exploration of connection, materiality and communal play that mirrors the exhibition’s theme. The work playfully nods to the European maypole, where communities celebrate spring by dancing round a tall pole.

October Gallery’s Education Department aims to reflect the diversity of global and UK cultures through exhibitions and workshops with schools, families, community groups and artist educators. OG Education strives to establish a model for best practice in participatory arts and develops projects with a variety of schools and communities, offering art expertise, excellent teaching and high-quality results.

This exhibition and the work of the October Gallery Education Department are kindly supported by John Lyon’s Charity, Camden Council and St Andrew Holborn Charities.

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AUBREY WILLIAMS: Elemental Force

22 May – 26 July 2025
Aubrey Williams, Towakaima I, 1965.
Oil on canvas, 122 x 153 cm.
© Estate of Aubrey Williams.
© Estate of Aubrey Williams.
Aubrey Williams, Quartet No 5, opus 92 (Shostakovich series), 1981.
Oil on canvas, 132 x 208 cm.
© Estate of Aubrey Williams.
October Gallery presents a solo exhibition by Aubrey Williams, comprising a selection of significant paintings, spanning the decades between the 1960s and 1980s. This exhibition explores Williams’ painterly techniques, investigating his highly individual approach.

Williams’ work can be viewed as a uniquely evolved expression of abstraction and a powerful contribution to post-war art. In displaying his intuitive grasp of the possibilities open to abstraction, these striking works deploy an entirely original use of colour. The range of paintings underline the breadth of Williams’ interests: ecology, cosmology, music and pre-colonial civilisations.

As the art critic and curator, Mel Gooding noted, ‘These effects of natural dynamics persist in Williams’ work in such a way as to become a characteristic expressive trope that is so utterly personal as to be signature.’ 

Aubrey Williams' distinctive contribution to 20th century British art is now recognised by his increasing prominence in significant international exhibitions. Tate Britain dedicated a room to works by this master of abstraction in their rehang of meaningful examples of British art in 2023 – 2024. Following The Earth Will Open Its Mouth, at the Museum Sztuki in Lodz, Poland, placing Williams’ canvases as a revelatory counterweight to Erna Rosenstein’s surrealist, impressionist art, a major exhibition, Feeling Color: Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling has recently opened at The Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, in the United States.  

Last year, Paul Mellon Centre published Aubrey Williams: Art, Histories, Futures, the first major monograph on pioneering modernist Aubrey Williams.

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