<h2>INNER WORLDS, OUTER JOURNEYS<br> ABLADE GLOVER AT 90 <br> 4 JULY – 3 AUGUST 2024</h2> <h2>VITAL FORCE<br> 5 – 28 SEPTEMBER 2024</h2> <h2>VITAL FORCE<br> 5 – 28 SEPTEMBER 2024</h2> <h2>INNER WORLDS, OUTER JOURNEYS<br> ABLADE GLOVER AT 90 <br> 4 JULY – 3 AUGUST 2024</h2> <h2>INNER WORLDS, OUTER JOURNEYS<br> ABLADE GLOVER AT 90 <br> 4 JULY – 3 AUGUST 2024</h2> <h2>INNER WORLDS, OUTER JOURNEYS<br> ABLADE GLOVER AT 90 <br> 4 JULY – 3 AUGUST 2024</h2> <h2>ROMUALD HAZOUMÈ at the 60th Venice Biennale<br> 20th April – 24th November, 2024</h2> Photo © Jacopo La Forgia.<h2>ROMUALD HAZOUMÈ at the 60th Venice Biennale<br> 20th April – 24th November, 2024</h2> Photo © Jacopo La Forgia.<h2>EDDY KAMUANGA ILLUNGA<br>Available from our Book Store, £45.95 + P&P</h2>248 pages, 200 full colour plates throughout. Published by Rizzoli.<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

ABLADE GLOVER: Inner Worlds, Outer Journeys

4 July – 3 August 2024
Ablade Glover, Market Profile, 2018.
Oil on canvas. 127 x 101 cm.
Ablade Glover, Market Profile, 2019.
Oil on canvas. 152 x 152 cm.
In celebration of the artist’s 90th birthday, October Gallery is delighted to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Professor Ablade Glover. In a career spanning more than seven decades, Ablade Glover’s many honours and distinctions underline his importance as artist, educator and curator both in Ghana and internationally. Not only by his teaching and mentoring, which have inspired generations of artists coming to the forefront today, but also by his continually developing practice as a painter, has Ablade Glover helped shape the current course and future pathways of Ghanaian art.

Glover’s inimitable canvases celebrate, in vivid colours, the richly visual splendours of his native country. Using warm primary pigments, expressive of an intense solar heat, Glover depicts the vibrant scenes and spectacles playing out daily on the shimmering streets of Accra. He portrays the hidden spirit of the place – the energetic market stalls, the lorry parks and the brightly-attired crowds. Selecting the palette knife rather than the brush as his instrument of choice, Glover applies his oils skilfully, in a thick impasto that, when seen close to, reduces the restless Brownian motion of the bustling masses into a riotous wash of gloriously coloured abstraction.

In 1982, Ablade Glover was the first artist from sub-Saharan Africa to exhibit at October Gallery. Since then, the Gallery has devoted ten solo shows to the colourful and always energetic canvases of this acclaimed master of oil-on-canvas painting. Glover’s latest show, Inner Worlds, Outer Journeys, traces an arc of development, which his younger self, setting out on a journey of inner and outer discoveries, might not have imagined he could ever achieve as part of the unfolding tapestry of an accomplished life in art.

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FORTHCOMING EXHIBITION

VITAL FORCE

5 – 28 September 2024
LR Vandy, Resistance, 2024.
Manilla rope, wood and metal 128.6 x 32 x 29 cm.
Golnaz Fathi, When the rain comes we can be thankful, 2021.
Acrylic, ink and spray paint on canvas 170 x 130 cm.
October Gallery presents Vital Force, an exhibition that includes striking works by El Anatsui, Kenji Yoshida, LR Vandy, Romuald Hazoumè, Golnaz Fathi, Jukhee Kwon, Williams S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Govinda Sah ‘Azad and Elisabeth Lalouschek amongst others. Vital Force gives space for the innate energies of each unique artwork to manifest before bringing them together in a powerful drama of luminous interactive forms.

Highlights include Kenji Yoshida’s magnificent large-scale work, La Vie (Life), 1993, which employs an elliptical language of coloured forms rendered in gold and silver leaf. This extraordinary piece marries modernist abstraction with the delicate gilding techniques of Japanese tradition. This large-scale panelled work will be juxtaposed with a shimmering wall-hanging by El Anatsui. Created from recycled bottle-tops, intricately stitched together, the work will be hung in such a way as to allow the viewer to explore the range and composition of colours on both sides of the mesmerising metallic installation.

Romuald Hazoumè will be represented by one of his signature masks. These provocative works, assembled from found objects, operate as impromptu portraits of individuals, highlighting the artist’s astute social commentary. Adopting the ubiquitous plastic petrol cannister as his iconic signature, Hazoumè’s work is deeply rooted in the political and cultural context of Benin and its interactions with the wider globalised world beyond. Taken from her Hulls series, LR Vandy’s Resistance is an impressive large-scale wooden work that incorporates manilla rope tied into knots set delicately into its frame. These knots evoke the clenched fist, a symbolic nod to the Black power salute, the feminist movement of the 80s and the braided African hairstyle of Bantu Knots. Vandy’s use of hulls and knotted rope allude to the complex histories of transatlantic trade, and, more specifically, to the transport of migrants as commodities.

Jukhee Kwon creates her intricate sculptures out of unused and abandoned books. By skilful slicing and cutting, she transforms these tomes into sculptures bursting from the books’ spines, streaming out in cascading waterfalls, to explore ambient surface areas. While Govinda Sah’s latest canvas comprises subtly interwoven layers of acrylic marks and traces. Sah is fascinated by the universes within and beyond our earth-bound vision. Similarly, Iranian artist Golnaz Fathi’s bold gestural work, When the rain comes, we can be thankful, 2021, presents interwoven layers of enigmatic meanings.

Also on display will be Nierica - Caressed By Fire, a vibrant work by Elisabeth Lalouschek painted in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Lost to sight for thirty years, the painting will be shown for the first time since 1990. Finally, ink and spray paint works by artist and author, William S. Burroughs, are exhibited in conversation with longtime collaborator and fellow artist Brion Gysin’s work De la Cité des Arts..., an abstract ink on paper, depicting the artist’s unique perspective from the window from which his studio overlooked the Ile Saint Louis in Paris.

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NEWS, EVENTS & RECOMMENDATIONS


ROMUALD HAZOUMÈ at the 60th Venice Biennale
20th April – 24th November, 2024
Romuald Hazoumè has been selected as one of the four major artists to represent The Republic of Benin for the 60th edition of La Biennale di Venezia.

Entitled Everything Precious Is Fragile, this exhibition will explore the rich history of Benin, touching on themes such as the slave trade, the Amazon motif, spirituality and the Vodun religion. These themes are tied together by Benin's exploration of African feminism and pay tribute to women's versatility whilst envisioning a world where differences are seen as a source of richness and strength.

Acclaimed worldwide for his masks made from used plastic petrol cans, Romuald Hazoumè is an artist whose work is firmly rooted in Benin's social, political and cultural context and the globalized world.
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Photo: © Jonathan Greet, 20016.
EL ANATSUI at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2024
18th June – 18th August, 2024
El Anatsui’s new work Continents in Gestation, will be shown at The Royal Academy’s 256th Summer Exhibition.

The Summer Exhibition is a celebration of contemporary art and architecture and provides a vital platform and support for the artistic community—this year will explore the idea of making space.

Held since 1769, the Summer Exhibition displays works in a variety of mediums and genres by emerging and established artists.
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Photo: © Jonathan Greet, 2013.
EL ANATSUI at Talbot Rice Gallery
29th June – 29th September, 2024
Talbot Rice Gallery presents a major exhibition of El Anatsui, spanning five decades of his work and extending to the building’s façade, transforming it into an open-air gallery this summer. Titled El Anatsui ‘Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta', the exhibition will showcase a substantial selection of Anatsui’s iconic large-scale sculptural wall hangings made from reclaimed aluminium bottle tops. Additionally, the exhibition features a collection of carved wooden reliefs spanning over thirty years, as well as printed works on paper that narrate the intricate production process behind his monumental metal bottle tops installations.
El Anatsui, Nane,(detail), 2006.
Aluminium and copper wire, 270 x 380 cm. Private Collection.
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Photo: Jonathan Greet.
GOVINDA SAH 'AZAD' at Pie Projects, Santa Fe
20th July – 17th August, 2024
Pie Projects presents Boundless, an exhibition of sublime imagery and breathtaking abstractions by artists Govinda Sah 'Azad' and Judy Tuwaletstiwa. Boundless will showcase compositions of glass, paint and mixed media that evoke contemplation and a sense of limitless possibilities. Through their respective mediums, paint and glass, both artists explore the concept of transcending elementalism, using aesthetic materials to navigate the forces of nature.
Govinda Sah 'Azad', Rising Hope, 2023.
Acrylic on canvas, 200 x 140 cm.
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AUBREY WILLIAMS at Hepworth Wakefield
22nd June – 3rd November, 2024
Hepworth Wakefield's new exhibition, titled Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life, will explore the evolution of Jamaican-born sculptor Ronald Moody's art and will feature over 50 of Moody's works, ranging from large-scale figurative sculptures to his post-war experimental pieces. These works will be contextualised alongside artists with whom Moody exhibited, as well as members of the Caribbean Artists Movement, such as Aubrey Williams, — a revolutionary group of which both Moody and Williams were founding members of.
Govinda Sah 'Azad', Rising Hope, 2023.
Acrylic on canvas, 200 x 140 cm.
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Photo: © Mark Blower, 2024.

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VISTING OCTOBER GALLERY

Bloomsbury, London

October Gallery has been instrumental in bringing to worldwide attention many of the world’s leading international artists, including El Anatsui, Rachid Koraïchi, Romuald Hazoumè, Nnenna Okore, Laila Shawa and Kenji Yoshida. The Gallery promotes the Transvangarde, the very best in contemporary art from around the planet, as well as maintaining a cultural hub in central London for poets, writers, intellectuals and artists, and hosts talks, performances and seminars, see www.octobergallery.co.uk/events

The rich diversity of art presented is an inspiration to collectors and enthusiasts. Institutions such as the British Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany; Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany; Setagagya Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan have all collected works from October Gallery.

Founded in 1979, October Gallery is a charitable trust which is supported by sales of art, rental of the Gallery's unique facilities, grants from various funding bodies and the active support of dedicated artists, musicians, writers and many friends from around the world. The Gallery’s Education Department is inclusive of all ages from under 5’s to PGCE student and delivers a wide range of provision, see www.octobergalleryeducation.com

October Gallery is open from 12:30 to 17:30 pm, Tuesday to Saturday.
The Gallery is closed during official holidays and the entire month of August.



October Gallery Education supported by:


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