Exhibition
The Pestle Hit The Hide
22 Nov 2018 – 26 Nov 2018
Event times
11am - 5pm
Cost of entry
Free
The Wick Exchange
Address
- 29 White Post Lane
- London
England - E9 5EN
- United Kingdom
A collaborative exhibition by Motunrayo Akinola & Bill Daggs.
About
Akinola & Daggs’s work focus on extensive exploration of cultural and social identity. Soaked with narrative and social observation, we as the viewer are guided on a journey through both artist’s cultural roots, which at first seem disparate, are actually quite similar and dwell in a shared territory.
Akinola’s Yoruba heritage is rich in, and centred around family tradition and ritual. His heavily matriarchal influenced upbringing allowed him to pay homage to the strength and sensitivities of this in his recent solo show ‘Orin asa iyán gigun (Rhythms of yam pounding culture)’. Akinola’s part British upbringing and strong Yoruba identity often creates an interesting conflict, much similar to his use of materials.
Daggs looks at human behaviour, where we are positioned in society and what rolls we play within our communities. His solo show in June this year ‘A Place That Reeked of Deja Vu’ documented his experiences of growing up in North West London during the 90’s and early 2000’s and the ritualistic behaviours that revolved around him and his peer group. Daggs’s own culture was very much appropriated from different sources, a culture he says that grew from the discovery of Hip Hop at a very young age.
In ‘THE PESTLE HIT THE HIDE’ the focus on narrative and identity creates animated conversation between the works, challenging social stigma and often questioning our place in a post Brexit Britain and increasingly intolerant communities. Akinola’s sensitive female figures seem to soften Daggs’s rough looking male portraits; finding a balance opposite one another and at times almost sharing the same story. The works are closely connected to music and rhythm, whether that’s the pounding of yam, the clacking of the valves on a jazz musicians trumpet or the rumblings of old school basslines leaking out from the windows within their surrounding London neighbourhoods. The paintings themselves also have a certain rhythm to them, the urgency of Daggs’s heavily layered canvas, rushed and unfinished brush work and use of acrylic paint creates a contrast to Akinola’s slow, considered, delicate lines in oil and his deliberate exposure of raw canvas.