All cultures, past and present, have identified abnormal human behaviours – anomalous thoughts and actions – that once sustained tend to be judged negatively. Unable to participate or function within social life, psych behaviours are regarded disruptive to the person and the organisation of society. The boundaries drawn to distinguish between normality and madness are […]
In the beginning, we are addressed in quote. “This is a place where Death sometimes still warns of its passing. How? No one could answer exactly. It happens the day before, like a certitude that descends upon our bodies and minds…” Against a brooding shot of the breathing sea, cloaked in near darkness — our […]
Bleeding, splintering, RGB pixels paint repeated images of handshakes and embraces — filmed off a television screen, or from existing filmed material — until they expand to a short panorama of the China-Africa Summit held in Beijing in 2006. Rapturously applauding, celebratory faces of powerful men, presidents and heads of state are seen, to a […]
As the Beninese proverb rings out, ‘an old story does not open the ear as a new one does’. No illusions exist in here. If dolls never die, neither does their past. Much like the synthesised histories present in Gérard Quenum’s new sculptural works at the October Gallery, they will now, not die. Yet the […]
Romuald Hazoumé’s third solo exhibition at The October Gallery, Cargoland, is a re-appropriated and extended title — a familiar technique for those who follow his work. A play on ‘cargo’, which translates in West African French to mean “anything of weight and value that needs to be transported,” the Cargoland presented within the gallery space […]
The wobbly giraffes doing the splits next to my bed reveal my recent bedtime narrative. Subconsciously and adrift, I appear to have amassed a week long collection of literary conquests, scampering around on my bookshelf. So, after placing them apologetically back on their communal bed — their shelf — I unpacked the delivery of Binyavanga […]
