fbpx Larry Achiampong | CIRCA

Larry Achiampong is a British-Ghanaian artist, filmmaker and composer whose work explores the intersections of identity, migration, memory and belonging in the contemporary world. Working across film, sound, installation, performance and text, he creates expansive narratives that examine how personal histories are shaped by larger social, political and technological forces.

Born in London to Ghanaian parents, Achiampong’s practice draws upon his experience of growing up between cultures while engaging with wider questions surrounding postcolonialism, diaspora and the legacies of empire. Combining archival research, speculative storytelling and autobiographical reflection, his works often challenge dominant historical narratives, creating space for alternative perspectives and previously marginalised voices. Through a distinctive visual and sonic language, he investigates how identities are constructed and transformed across generations, geographies and digital networks.

In 2021, Achiampong participated in London Zeitgeist, a group exhibition curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal for CIRCA. Conceived as a contemporary response to Rosenthal’s landmark 1982 exhibition Zeitgeist, the project brought together a generation of artists whose practices reflected the cultural energy and complexity of London. Broadcast across public screens in London, Seoul and Tokyo, Achiampong’s commission Reliquary 2: A Letter of 4 Chapters combined moving image, sound and storytelling to explore questions of heritage, displacement and collective memory. Accompanied by the time-limited edition now is no time at all, the project demonstrated his ability to connect deeply personal narratives with broader reflections on history, identity and social transformation.

Achiampong’s work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the British Film Institute, Somerset House and the Venice Biennale. His acclaimed multi-platform project Relic Traveller established a speculative future through which to examine race, technology and belonging, exemplifying his broader interest in using fiction as a tool for understanding contemporary reality.

Through a practice that moves seamlessly between the intimate and the global, the historical and the speculative, Larry Achiampong creates works that challenge inherited narratives while imagining more inclusive futures. His art invites audiences to reconsider how identities are formed, whose stories are remembered and what new possibilities emerge when history is viewed from different perspectives.

 

London Zeitgeist: The Spirit of the Times

Written by Norman Rosenthal

David Hockney, the great star of the Piccadilly Lights and all round the world this last May (“Sunrise at Sunset” I called it, has often stated there is no longer a Bohemia like he used to know – a lot to do in his mind with bans on smoking and perhaps even a new puritanism that seems to be infecting the world at this time. Well I would, with all due respect to the master, maintain it is not quite as simple as that. certainly as far as the visual arts are concerned, indeed  in culture generally, every new generation, in each place where young artists live and work, will form its own new Bohemia. This is one definition of the Zeitgeist – the Spirit of the Times – a largely German philosophical concept and composite word, that has now entered the English language just like Kindergarten/ Garden for Children!

In spite of the terrible nationalist misunderstandings that underline Brexit, London remains still a great cosmopolitan largely tolerant mega city – beautifully so, and  it still attracts artists to live, work, interact with each other, support each other too. Since 1945 at least many such groups of artists and their hangers on  have come and gone – one thinks of worlds around Francis Bacon Lucian Freud and the Colony Room; Richard Hamilton, David Hockney and Allen Jones walking up and down the Kings Road in the Swinging Sixties, the Sculptors who gathered around the Lisson Gallery up the Edgware Road and the Nigel Greenwood Gallery in Sloane Square in the Seventies – Gilbert and George, Richard Long, Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley and others, only to be succeeded in the happy Hoxton Square Days by the YBA’s, lead by Damien, Sarah, Tracey, Angus, The Chapman Brothers and a host of others.

Shop

Loading products...

Subscribe to our newsletter

Subscription successful

An error occurred