By Vincent Obi
Edinburgh, May 29, 2024 – Talbot Rice Gallery, U.K. says it will showcase a major exhibition this summer in Edinburgh, Scotland, of the arts works of celebrated African artist and art scholar, Prof. El Anatsui of Ghana.
108scoop gathers that the exhibition ranks as the most significant exploration of Emeritus Professor El Anatsui’s art practice ever staged in the U.K.
On the sidelines of the exhibition, the 442-year-old Edinburgh University, where Anatsui’s monumental art installation, “TSIATSIA”, will feature, says it will honour Anatsui with an honorary doctorate degree at its July convocation, the Ghanaian’s third award in as many months.
According to the university, the exhibition will feature monumental new art works made specifically for Talbot Rice Gallery.
This will form part of an important selection of Anatsui’s iconic, large-scale sculptural wall hangings, created with reclaimed metal from the bottling industries in Nigeria and Ghana between 2002 and 2024.
Among the artist’s work that will be on display is the famed art work, titled: “Woman’s Cloth” (2002), the first of its kind on loan from the British Museum; and “Royal Slumber” (2023).
This exhibition also includes a selection of carved wooden reliefs from over a 30-year work period, as well as printed works on paper carrying the imprint of Anatsui’s intricate production of his monumental metal bottle-top artworks.
A culmination of the exhibition is a huge outdoor installation, “TSIATSIA—Searching for Connection” (2013); which is a gigantic art work to welcome visitors into the heart of Edinburgh University, where the grass Quad of the Old College is reframed as an art gallery.
Prof. Anatsui’s work is also featuring on the facade of the building of the Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta, thus transforming it into an exceptional open-air gallery.
In creating his extraordinary new 13-metre wide artwork for the Edinburgh exhibition, El Anatsui, who was born in Ghana, but has lived mainly in Nigeria, recalls: “the Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta, provided me in Ghana with books and crayons as a child”. The organisation spans over five decades of work.
Anatsui’s latest artworks in Edinburgh, with the indelible memory of Scotland’s role in Africa, is described as “being full of political, post-colonial and social histories”.
In addition, Anatsui’s art is said by art critics: “to slip mercurially between painting and sculpture, with his work consisting of shape-shifting forms installed differently every time they are shown”.
They are also described as: “rippling with intensity through his unification of thousands of fragments of metals to create a metamorphic whole, imbued with the ability to evolve”.
The curator of the exhibition is Tessa Giblin; and is supported by Creative Scotland, Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Edinburgh.
