<h2>JORDAN ANN CRAIG: YOUR WILDEST DREAMS<br>2 December 2021 - 29 January 2022</h2><h2>JORDAN ANN CRAIG: YOUR WILDEST DREAMS<br>Catalogue available from our store £10 + P&P</h2><h2>JORDAN ANN CRAIG: YOUR WILDEST DREAMS<br>2 December 2021 - 29 January 2022</h2><h2>EXPANDING HORIZONSS<br>3 February – 12 March 2022</h2> In honour of Pamela Kember<h2>EDDY KAMUANGA ILUNGA<br>NEW PRINT EDITIONS RELEASED</h2>Now Available From Our Store<h2>JORDAN ANN CRAIG: YOUR WILDEST DREAMS<br>2 December 2021 - 29 January 2022</h2><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

Jordan Ann Craig: YOUR WILDEST DREAMS

2 December 2021 - 29 January 2022
Jordan Ann Craig, Nothing Is Enough For You, 2021.
Acrylic on canvas, 152 x 140 cm.
Jordan Ann Craig, Berry Baby; From Cheyenne Bag , 2020.
Acrylic on canvas, 114 x 5 x 114 cm.
Your Wildest Dreams is Jordan Ann Craig’s first solo exhibition at October Gallery. Northern Cheyenne artist Jordan Ann Craig creates paintings, prints and textile works which are an exploration of existence, time and space woven from cultural memory and epiphany. This exhibition presents a newly completed series of reimaged hard-edge paintings, which are based on Cheyenne cultural design and autobiographical observation.

Craig draws inspiration from Indigenous textiles, beadwork, pottery and landscapes. Her work shares personal stories through abstraction, colour and rhythm. She engages past, present and future to depict Indigenous design through a contemporary lens. Craig creates new narratives within her work while celebrating her ancestors and Indigenous land.

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FORTHCOMING EXHIBITION

EXPANDING HORIZONS

3 February - 12 March 2022
Govinda 'Sah' Azad, Serenity, 2021.
Oil on canvas, 160 x 180 cm.
Tian Wei, Moon, 2017.
Iridescent acrylic on canvas, 155 x 241 cm.
Expanding Horizons pays homage to writer, curator and art historian Pamela Kember, who ardently championed Asian art in the U.K. and further afield.

A body of new works by Govinda Sah ‘Azad’ will be included in this exhibition. In his paintings Sah effortlessly balances traditional eastern metaphysical insights about the nature of reality with visual realisations that are in accord with the latest formulations of contemporary western science. He imagines a cosmos of boundless possibilities. A painter of tempestuous skies and cosmic explosions as well as an avid admirer of J. M. W. Turner, Sah followed in the footsteps of the Romanticist, and now lives and works in Margate.

Tian Wei is renowned for his striking monochromatic canvases in bold colours that explore the written word and the plasticity of meaning. Words and quotations in minute script fill the backdrop of Tian’s paintings, forming a patterned ground on which larger semi-abstract shapes are drawn. The cursive lines spell out simple English words, such as ‘soul’ and ‘red.’ These selected English adjectives and nouns represented in Chinese calligraphic style give the viewer insight into the artist’s lived experience of an emerging synergy between eastern and western sensibilities.

Jukhee Kwon creates works from the printed page quite literally; using abandoned and disused books, she shreds the pages by hand to create magnificent ‘book sculptures.’ The sculptures brim with energy, often flowing out of books in the form of cascading waterfalls. Each book, while destroyed, claims a new life and existence through creation.

As Head of Arts and Learning at Asia House Pamela Kember was instrumental in collaborations between Asia House and October Gallery. Several of Jukhee Kwon’s works were installed at Asia House in collaboration with Kember this included The Book of Galileo (2014) which was created by the artist for the 2014 edition of Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival.

Kenji Yoshida’s monumental works consist of ethereal gold, silver and precious metals on canvas which unite a restrained tradition of Japanese applique work with that of an abstract modernist aesthetic. In 1964, Yoshida moved to Paris, the acknowledged centre of Modernism. This move brought Yoshida’s work into contact with the great artistic movements of the time. He was confronted by the heady shock of the Abstract Expressionists, in particular Rothko and Motherwell, who both employ similarly abstract forms in striving for the transcendent spirituality that characterises Yoshida’s art.

In 1993, Kenji Yoshida became the first living artist ever to be given a solo exhibition at the Japanese Galleries of the British Museum, London, UK. October Gallery has presented regular exhibitions of Yoshida’s work since the late 1980s.

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RECENT EXHIBITIONS

Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga: GHOST OF THE PRESENT

13 October - 27 November 2021
Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga, Profondeur d’identité 2 (Deeper into Identity 2), 2021.
Acrylic and oil on canvas, 170 x 150 cm.
Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga, Mokangu 1901, 2021.
Acrylic and oil on canvas, 200 x 200 cm.
Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga’s third solo exhibition will run simultaneously with 1-54 London 2021. This exhibition features a new body of work by Eddy Kamuanga.

In this new series, Eddy Kamuanga furthers his investigations of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s history by examining the effect of Catholic missions in the country from the end of the 19th century onwards. His large-scale figurative compositions offer insight into the colonial influence of such enterprise, and into the acts of resistance that it triggered.

Kamuanga continues to portray his subjects with bare skin replaced by intricate electronic circuitry. This references the components of our everyday modern devices, technology that could not exist without coltan, a substance mined at volume in the DRC, with great human and environmental cost.

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Benji Reid: LAUGH AT GRAVITY

3 September - 9 October 2021
Benji Reid, Inconsolable, 2020.
Giclée Print, 100 x 92 cm. Ed. of 8 plus 2 AP.
Benji Reid, Spirit Guide, 2020.
Giclée Print, 100 x 95 cm. Ed. of 8 plus 2 AP.

Laugh at Gravity is Benji Reid’s first solo exhibition at October Gallery. This highly anticipated show will take place simultaneously with Photo London 2021, where October Gallery’s presentation will include new works by Benji Reid.

Benji Reid considers himself a Choreo-Photolist; a term he coined to encapsulate his unique practice where theatricality, choreography and photography meet in the image. His breathtaking photographs, comprised primarily of self-portraits in incredible, anti-gravitational poses with a medley of props, draws the audience into a different dimension. In the hyper-realities he presents, the subject is liberated by acts of the artist’s imagination. Whether exploring life as an outsider, issues surrounding mental health, or complexities of fatherhood, Reid makes the audience part of the discussion. Each perfectly poised portrait, set against vivid backdrops and adorned with fantastical objects, addresses the world we live in. Everyday objects like a paddle, a sparkler, or a stool transform and transport the subject into an alternative reality which offers protection and liberation.

The photographer Robert Golden describes in detail how Reid ‘’turns the trashcan into a rocket, he will use motors contrived to fly higher and faster than the crowd. His anti-gravitational mysteries, which fail to reflect the ‘real’ world as it seems to be, does what fine art can do in troubled times. He makes us smile – a victory in itself, but more, he provides a greater reality, one worthy of his talent.’’


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