Ali Cherri exhibition set for 12 April opening

Artist Harold Offeh will transform the ground floor gallery of Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art into a sci-fi playscape this summer, creating collaborative encounters between audiences and artists. The Mothership Collective 2:0 will invite visitors of all ages to imagine potential futures by visiting stations throughout the exhibition, each one drawing on sci-fi, futurisms and utopian thinking. Using sound, text and objects, visitors will be encouraged to explore their creativity and have collaborative encounters that explore what different futures might look like.

The project will revisit concepts the artist explored in The Mothership Collective in 2006 which saw Offeh invite fellow artists, dancers and musicians to create work with members of the public inspired by ideas of Afrofuturist mythology in the music and performances of George Clinton and Sun-Ra.

“I’m excited to be revisiting and reconceiving The Mothership Collective with the Baltic. The project is an invitation to play, make and speculate about future possibilities and desires. We want to make space and the conditions for creativity, curiosity and joy as fundamental to any form of change,” said Harold Offeh.

For two decades Harold Offeh has produced work including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. His playful and often provocative works employ humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture.

The exhibition at Baltic will be informed by collaboration with communities in the North East and, throughout the exhibition, invited artists will work with members of the public to activate the space from the perspective of their own practices. It will invite and support exploration of future possibilities for play and interaction. Inspired by repurposed and recycled materials, the space will be defined by play areas investigating landscape and habitats, identity through costume, patterns through sound and sensory experience, prophesies and prediction through writing. Visitors will be encouraged to make noise, interact with the exhibition, and explore through play.

In partnership with Tramway

Artist Biography

Harold Offeh is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of histories. He employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including Tate Britain and Tate Modern, South London Gallery, Turf Projects, London, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, Wysing Art Centre, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, MAC VAL, France, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark and Art Tower Mito.

He studied Critical Fine Art Practice at The University of Brighton, MA Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art and recently completed a PhD by practice exploring the activation of Black Album covers through durational performance. He lives in Cambridge and works in London, UK. He previously held the role of Reader in Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University and was a visiting tutor at Goldsmiths College and The Slade School of Art, UCL, London. He is currently a tutor in MA Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art

The three-channel video installation, Of Men and Gods and Mud (2022), for which the artist was awarded the Silver Lion at the 59th Venice Biennale, was filmed at the Merowe Dam on the Nile River in Northern Sudan. In the early 2000s, the construction of the largest hydropower plant in Africa led to the displacement of more than 50,000 people. The film follows a group of brickmakers and their daily toil as they rebuild, shaping their bricks from mud.

The expanded exhibition at Baltic will also bring together additional works including the artist’s acclaimed short film The Watchman (2023). Set in Cyprus, The Watchman reflects on the tensions around the military division line that separates the Greek and Turkish communities. It centres on the figure of a soldier who mans a watchtower looking out for ‘the enemy’. Weary from his long shift, the soldier inhabits a space between wakefulness and sleep where peculiar things start to happen. In a related sculptural work The Seven Soldiers,  a series of oversized heads are caught in a perpetual state of slumber, their haunting expressions resembling the ghostly figures that appear at the end Cherri’s film.

“With 'How I Am Monument,' I reflect on the processes through which historical and cultural narratives are constructed and transformed, the fragility of power, and the shifting nature of collective memory. It is an honour to present this expanded chapter at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, especially at a time when re-evaluating our shared history is crucial for understanding the complexities of the present.”

Ali Cherri: How I Am Monument is curated by Emma Dean. 

Artist Talk
Saturday 12 April 2025, 14:00 

Ali Cherri will take part in an Artist Talk with curator Emma Dean at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead on Saturday 12 April 2025 at 14:00. Tickets available here.

Press Contact
Emma Pybus emma@emmapybus.com 
Press Preview: Friday 11 April, 10:00–17:00