David Bell excerpt & Loughborough University Sculpture Map
Loughborough University Sculpture Map featuring Atta Kwami’s sculptures on Shirley Pearce Square
David Bell’s excerpt on Atta Kwami works at Loughborough University:
‘Atta Kwami
Atsiaƒu ƒe agbo nu
Painted marine plywood, 2020 (installed 2022)
Dusiadu Painted marine plywood, 2020 (installed 2022)
These two sculptures are among the last works produced by the Ghanian artist Atta Kwami, who made Loughborough his home with his wife Pamela Clarkson-Kwami for many years. We are grateful that she has loaned them to the University, with the support of Andy Philpott, who worked with Kwami to fabricate the works.
The works were commissioned for Folkestone Triennial in 2021 and are named in the Ewe language, spoken mainly in West Africa. The striking double archway of Atsiaƒu ƒe agbo nu (Gateway to the Sea) was commissioned for a plot at the beginning of the Folkestone Harbour Arm, and is designed to provoke reflection on immigration and emigration: a joyous riposte, perhaps, to the architectures of control usually found at borders. Relocated here, close to a major pedestrian entrance to campus, it marks a transition from town to campus (and vice versa).
The five hut-like structures of Dusiadu (EveryTown) are inspired by West African vending kiosks. They were described by Kwami as creating ‘a conversation in architectural space,’ which passers-by are invited to join.
Both works share Kwami’s interest in vernacular structural, material and decorative forms, and are inspired by his desire to ‘transform ordinary objects into magnificence’. They give sculptural form to many of the ideas explored in his 2011 book Kumasi Realism 1951-2007: An African Modernism, which rejects the dichotomous treatment of African culture as rooted in ‘tradition’ against a (supposedly) Euro-American ‘modernity’, and brought everyday forms of visual culture such as sign-painting into conversation with contemporary art.
Kwami was born in Accra, Ghana, in 1956, and across four decades produced a large body of paintings, sculptures, prints and publications. He received a PhD from the Open University in 2007, which formed the basis of Kumasi Realism, and taught in Nigeria and Ghana. After meeting the printmaker Pamela Clarkson in the early nineties he divided his time between Ghana’s second city Kumasi and Loughborough, where he latterly held a studio at Modern Painters, New Decorators. His work has been shown at galleries around the world, and can be found in the collections of the National Museum of Ghana, the V&A, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington D.C., The National Museum of Kenya, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the British Museum. Shortly before his death he designed stained glass windows for the National Cathedral of Ghana, and was awarded the prestigious Maria Lassnig Prize, which will result in a new public mural and monograph in association with London’s Serpentine Gallery.
For more information on the University’s sculpture collection, including an interactive map, please visit lboro.ac.uk/arts/arts-collection/sculpture-trail.’
David Bell
Programme Coordinator, LU Arts & Radar
University Teacher, Creative Arts
Loughborough University
︎
David Bell’s excerpt on Atta Kwami works at Loughborough University:
‘Atta KwamiAtsiaƒu ƒe agbo nu
Painted marine plywood, 2020 (installed 2022)
Dusiadu Painted marine plywood, 2020 (installed 2022)
These two sculptures are among the last works produced by the Ghanian artist Atta Kwami, who made Loughborough his home with his wife Pamela Clarkson-Kwami for many years. We are grateful that she has loaned them to the University, with the support of Andy Philpott, who worked with Kwami to fabricate the works.
The works were commissioned for Folkestone Triennial in 2021 and are named in the Ewe language, spoken mainly in West Africa. The striking double archway of Atsiaƒu ƒe agbo nu (Gateway to the Sea) was commissioned for a plot at the beginning of the Folkestone Harbour Arm, and is designed to provoke reflection on immigration and emigration: a joyous riposte, perhaps, to the architectures of control usually found at borders. Relocated here, close to a major pedestrian entrance to campus, it marks a transition from town to campus (and vice versa).
The five hut-like structures of Dusiadu (EveryTown) are inspired by West African vending kiosks. They were described by Kwami as creating ‘a conversation in architectural space,’ which passers-by are invited to join.
Both works share Kwami’s interest in vernacular structural, material and decorative forms, and are inspired by his desire to ‘transform ordinary objects into magnificence’. They give sculptural form to many of the ideas explored in his 2011 book Kumasi Realism 1951-2007: An African Modernism, which rejects the dichotomous treatment of African culture as rooted in ‘tradition’ against a (supposedly) Euro-American ‘modernity’, and brought everyday forms of visual culture such as sign-painting into conversation with contemporary art.
Kwami was born in Accra, Ghana, in 1956, and across four decades produced a large body of paintings, sculptures, prints and publications. He received a PhD from the Open University in 2007, which formed the basis of Kumasi Realism, and taught in Nigeria and Ghana. After meeting the printmaker Pamela Clarkson in the early nineties he divided his time between Ghana’s second city Kumasi and Loughborough, where he latterly held a studio at Modern Painters, New Decorators. His work has been shown at galleries around the world, and can be found in the collections of the National Museum of Ghana, the V&A, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington D.C., The National Museum of Kenya, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the British Museum. Shortly before his death he designed stained glass windows for the National Cathedral of Ghana, and was awarded the prestigious Maria Lassnig Prize, which will result in a new public mural and monograph in association with London’s Serpentine Gallery.
For more information on the University’s sculpture collection, including an interactive map, please visit lboro.ac.uk/arts/arts-collection/sculpture-trail.’
David Bell
Programme Coordinator, LU Arts & Radar
University Teacher, Creative Arts
Loughborough University
︎