Tiwani Contemporary is delighted to open its 2024 London programme with the group exhibition Polymythologies, featuring Leo Robinson, Ivan Forde and Richard Ayodeji Ikhide.
Polymythologies introduces how each artist draws upon a wide constellation of references to a globalized collective unconscious, classical allegory, science fiction, and gaming to explore and ground their aesthetic propositions and engagement to create new mythologies, that foreground excavations, migrations, liminal experiences, and transformations that collapse historical and futuristic perspectives to speculate or speak directly to present conditions.
Leo Robinson will present works that elaborate his research and interest in an array of ancient and modern visual treatises, cosmological drawings and artefacts that observe ritual and the cultivation of belief and knowledge systems. Ceremonial attire, and a series of new collages inspired by his recent visit to the world heritage site, Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove in Osun State, Nigeria, considers the tensions of returnee diasporas to origin sites of worship.
Ivan Forde’s commitment to the literary genre of the epic narrative depicts the journey and encounters of the Hero protagonist, guided by the poetics of celestial skies and primordial waters. The scenarios Forde’s epic serializes, appear as two and three dimensional compositions: hanging silk and Kozo paper scrolls, painting on linen, mural, moving image and expanded notions of photography are proposed for this exhibition as site-specific sculpture; a tailor made paper suit, is performed and activated in London as a wearable cyanotype, that transforms over the period of the exhibition as a long exposure portrait of London skies.
For Polymythologies, Richard Ayodeji Ikhide eschews conventional paper dimensions, and transposes his inimitable drawing style to an irregular and variably shaped format of mid and large-scale watercolors mimicking ancient Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets or amulets. The works vignette the exploits of a society of demi-gods in progress; initiates learning and performing rites to move onto the next stages of their own personal prowess and evolution.
Artist Biographies
Ivan Forde (b. in Guyana, lives and works in the Bronx NY, USA) works across photography, printmaking, collage, sound performance, and installation. The artist performs for the camera often outdoors or in the studio, framing himself as protagonist, antagonist, and chimerical human/animal hybrids navigating the antique structures of epic poetry to redefine contemporary notions of migration(s), memory, homeland(s) and identity(ies). Forde’s non-linear analysis of classic poetry about the origin of nature, the ocean, human culture, life and death, opens the possibility of reformed archetypes, alternative endings, and new beginnings. By crafting new visual epics, often depicted in shades of blue cyanotype, Forde intertwines the personal and the global to offer a transformative view of prevailing narratives that unite us across cultures, geographies, and time.
Recent exhibitions include Putting On The Sky, Koki Arts, Tokyo, Japan, 2023; Afrofuturism: A History Of Black Futures, National Museum Of African American History And Culture, Washington DC, USA, 2023; Uptown Triennial 2023, Wallach Gallery Columbia University, New York NY, USA, 2022; Everything Is Common, Whitney Independent Study group exhibition, Artist’s Space, New York NY, USA, 2022; Local Edge Margin (Syracuse), Syracuse University Art Museum, New York NY, USA, 2021.
Leo Robinson (b. in UK, lives and works in Glasgow). Robinson graduated from the Manchester School of Art in 2016. In his work, Robinson constructs speculative systems of knowledge and ritual through the lenses of religion, psychoanalysis, and diasporic experience. With the creation of maps, diagrams, games, ritual objects and music, Robinson introduces new networks of symbols as means to understand our connections to both inner and outer worlds. The work often suggests a future or parallel civilization in which these belief systems have been reconstructed from fragments, through acts of hybridity and reappropriation, as a form of healing from the legacies of colonial displacement and erasure.
Robinson will open his first solo exhibition titled DREAM-BRIDGE-OMNIGLYPH at London Mithraeum, Bloomberg Space This February in London, UK. During 2023, Robinson completed a research and production residency at G.A.S. founded by Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, supported by Tiwani Contemporary. Recent solo exhibitions include On Exactitude, Indigo+Madder, London, UK, 2023; The Infinity Card, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, UK, 2022; Theories for Cosmic Joy, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK, 2019. Recent group exhibitions include The Trembling Museum, The Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, UK, 2023; To The Edge of Time, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, 2021; Antechamber, Quench, Margate, UK, 2021; Bathing Nervous Limbs, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, UK, 2021; tender spots in hard code..., Arebyte, London, UK, 2021.
Richard Ayodeji Ikhide (b. in Nigeria) is a visual artist based in London. He explores themes in dealing with the creation of personal mythology as well as the importance of myth in modern man. Ikhide earned a BA in Textile Design at Central Saint Martins in 2014, where he specialized in Printed Textiles. After receiving his diploma, Ikhide embraced drawing as his core practice. Recent exhibitions include Acts of Creation, Victoria Miro Projects, Online, 2023; Image Impressions, FF Projects, Lagos, Nigeria 2023; Untitled Art Fair, Victoria Miro Booth, Miami FL, USA, 2023; Prospect and Refuge, Sim Smith, London, UK 2022; Cosmic Memory, Steve Turner, Los Angeles CA, USA, 2021; Assemble, V.O Curations, London, UK, 2021; Mythmaking, Steve Turner, Los Angeles CA, USA 2021; Osmosis, Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK, 2019; Future Past, V.O Curations, London, UK, 2021; No horizon, no edge to liquid, Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK 2020; For the Many, Not the Few, Guts Gallery, online, 2020; Bloomberg New Contemporaries, South London Gallery, London, UK, 2018.