Larry Achiampong Wayfinder

Larry Achiampong’s powerful works in film and other media address issues of class, gender, post-colonial identity and the deeply entrenched inequalities in contemporary society. Drawing on popular culture and his personal heritage, his practice incorporates moving image, sound, sculpture, collage, music and performance.

Journeys are at the heart of this exhibition, journeys across space and time, journeys with others and journeys of self-discovery. In the artist’s newly commissioned feature-length film Wayfinder (2022),a young girl sets out on an epic journey across England. In the Relic Traveller project (2017 – ongoing), a Pan African Alliance of astronauts travel back in time to retrieve the forgotten testimonies of those who have been historically oppressed.

The voice, listening and storytelling are central to Achiampong’s practice as tools to recover erased histories and experiences. The distinctive voice-over narratives in his films draw on real testimonies, his own autobiography and oral histories. His artistic language is informed by stories and symbolism from his Ghanaian-Akan heritage, passed on to him by his mother. 

Popular culture is also a major source of inspiration for Achiampong, specifically film, music, comic books and video games. For the artist, ‘sound makes up at least seventy per cent of our experience of film’ and he composes his own electro-synth and orchestral scores. Video games are an important influence on his approach to sound, character and landscape, as well as on his sculptural installations. The exhibition continues on Level 2, where in the Gaming Room you can play video games that have inspired him, many of which will also take you on a journey. 

Set in a pandemic, Wayfinder follows a young girl, The Wanderer, played by Perside Rodrigues, on a journey across England, from Hadrian’s Wall to Margate. A road movie of sorts, it is divided into six chapters, which explore issues of class, racism and gentrification, diasporic identity and the meaning of home.

The six chapters have voice-overs by five Black women and girls, written in collaboration with writer Aide Amoako. These narratives combine poetic reflections with real accounts, some of which draw on Achiampong’s own autobiography.

Travelling the country from north to south, The Wanderer encounters many different places, people, stories and situations. She begins her journey at Hadrian’s Wall and is seen off by a Griot – an important figure in West African culture whose role is to preserve oral histories. In Wellingborough, she meets Anita Neil OLY, the first female Black British Olympian. In London, The Wanderer visits JMW Turner’s paintings at the National Gallery, feeling the weight of Britain’s colonial past as she walks the empty halls at night. From there she travels east to the iconic Bethnal Green café E. Pellicci and on to Purfleet in Essex, eventually reaching the sea at Margate.

The Wanderer was inspired by Achiampong’s sister: ‘although two years younger than me,’ he says, ‘she would travel to far off places way before me.’ Through The Wanderer’s intrepid journey, the film builds a conversation about freedom to travel on one hand, and displacement of communities on the other. It asks us – who feels that they belong and what is the meaning of home?

Achiampong’s multi-disciplinary Relic Traveller project imagines a near future in which a Relic Travellers’ alliance is formed by the African Union. Equipped with space travel technology, the Relic Travellers go to the West to explore deserted landscapes and architectures, relics of a colonial past. Their mission is to collect the vocal testimonies of those historically oppressed through colonialism, capitalism and globalisation, and as the artist states, the ‘stories and experiences of people who have not yet been allowed to be healed or learned from.’

Two of the Relic films, flags and a new series of Relic space suits are shown here. The project was partly inspired by two events that coincided in 2016 – the UK voting to leave the European Union and the African Union announcing a new international passport scheme. Achiampong imagines a future in which the West has driven itself into decline through separatist politics, while Africa has evolved into a prosperous and harmonious union responsible for shaping the future of our planet.

The testimonies collected by the Relic Travellers form the voice-over narratives of Achiampong’s Relic films and are used by the African Union to govern responsibly from the bottom up. The artist’s concept of ‘Sanko-time’ is at the core of the project. It is based in the Twi word Sankofa, which means ‘to go back and retrieve.’ For Achiampong this is a cyclical concept of time, ‘using the past to prepare for the future.’

This series of digital collages draws on photographs from Achiampong’s own family albums from the 1980s. These intimate moments of family life and formal group portraits were mainly photographed by his mother. The artist has replaced the face of every Black person with an identical black circle containing red lips. As Achiampong explains, ‘I was depicting the experience of being treated like an alien based on the colour of my skin.’ The black circle and red lips reference the homogenising and dehumanising iconography of the ‘golliwog’, which the artist remembers from the Robinson’s marmalade jar as a child – only discontinued in 2002 and still perpetuated by brands such as Gucci. The appropriation of this iconography is also an act of political resistance, partly inspired by the Guy Fawkes mask from Alan Moore’s anarchist comic V for Vendetta.