On Love
I remember hearing, or reading, that many people connote red with love, but in fact, love is blue. Love for me is a wave; it can stretch further than I can envisage; it can carry, hold, caress, make me feel weightless, anchor me. Love, the encompassing feeling of internal soothing, visible at the creases of one’s eyes when they crinkle as cheeks push up to make space for that smile that transports even the oldest person back to childhood. Yet, its lack, or the fear that arises at the pit of one’s stomach at the thought of the tide of love not coming back in, twists the soul into a dead weight, unable to catch enough air to float through the stronger waves, to re-find the gentle calming seas that await, always, after a moment of contrast.
I realised a few years ago, my practice is my search for and examination of connection; to find a sense of place, belonging, a place to be loved, a place to explore how love is performed, shared and felt. In 2020 I founded HOME, and a year and a half later, I asked some of those who have held me afloat to gather, ahead of the opening of On Love – curated with my dear friend Joy Yamusangie – to share space with me, and allow me to celebrate and document them in the way most natural to me.
I love you all.
Photographed at @home_by_ronanmckenzie during On Love, curated by Ronan Mckenzie and Joy Yamusangie. Featuring the works of Abena Appiah, Alfie Kungu, Cece Philips, Claudette Johnson, Emma Prempeh, Jazz Grant, Joy Yamusangie, Layota Okuneye, Phoebe Boswell, Ronan Mckenzie, Sade Mica, Sola Olulode, Tanoa Sasraku, Toby Cato and Tonique Sewell.
Thank you for working on this with me even though I kept adding more and more and more loved ones @ericjmcneal@michelle_boggs@stephanie_aelbrecht 🤎
Thank you always for the space Frances @luncheonmagazine 🤎
Like warm shores, you will feel me…
Two figures create a protective corner facing away from Hackney Town Hall towards Hackney Empire, where I grew up going to Oliver Samuels shows. To be standing here today at a statue so black it reflects the blue of the sky, with straight back cornrows, beside a female figure holding such honesty within the stature that again, I see so many of my own experiences. I of course am a fan of Thomas, but more so, I’m a fan the way he allows the souls of many to flow through him and be represented in singular bodies of work. Thank you for this work; the space these two figures have created to protect each other, protects me and my legacy as a descendant of the Windrush generation.
I see a woman who wasn’t afforded a girlhood, wasn’t allowed the simple privilege of growing from a child to an adult in peace, yet a woman who continues to shape-shift between roles, except one that would allow her to release the tension that is woven tightly between her desires and her reality.
Her stance carries such weight, a pain, moments in which my mother cries out in anguish and tells me that no one will ever know what she has been through. Yet the stance is still standing, maybe fractured, but never broken. The stance I recognise as pained, a body where many wounds have landed but have been sealed with determination, and frankly, necessity to stand up.
In his face, I read, or project frustration. Where her energy to be seen has been passed on to the many people who in some way she has mothered, he stands with an air of “you will see me, you will see me, you will see me, and you will feel me.” His presence and stature magnificent, carrying the fire of those who came before with the burden of making it all worthwhile, but with the entitlement of deserving what they didn’t have.
Titled ‘Warm Shores’, the piece is reminiscent of where we came from, and what our parents hoped for on their arrival. Thomas’ ‘Warm Shores’ creates a new shore in Hackney as a place that we finally receive the welcome that we were promised.
These are just my first thoughts.. and I look forward to sharing more space with this work. Thank you @thomasjprice__ 🖤
Standing in front of @thomasjprice__ ‘Moments Contained’ I smiled because in this overwhelmingly white space, I saw that middle moment between childhood and adulthood when I masked fear and insecurity with a specific inner city type of dismissive confidence. There are so many people and memories I recognise within the work, and the audacity of its scale made me mirror the smug confidence of the figure as I stood in front of it, validating my own sense of belonging at the fair.
After a particularly ignorant man assumed @julianknxx was the artist simply because he was present, then proceeded to tell us that Africa is the future, I explored Art Basel with headphones in, creating my own atmosphere from which to take in the fair.
When I saw Deana Lawson’s ‘White Spider’, Needle Eye - Spice, was my soundtrack and it made me laugh. A white man passed by the work and grinned, I wondered what it evoked within him to make him smile. For me the piece is inexplicably bold, brave and honest, demanding attention within the space and celebrating a moment of freedom and joy. I stood observing for a while, but most people walked past without paying the work any mind, letting their eyes float away from it as quickly their gaze landed on it, and after a while, three women stood in front of it talking, completely ignoring the piece behind them.
I connect to works instinctively; appreciating the structure, shape, texture, tonality, colour or what how they make me feel. I often prefer to see if I connect to the work before reading the context.
@theastergates ’Hardware Store Painting’ made me re-consider the purpose of artworks in different contexts; the work invited me to think of art as a tool to examine the value of everyday spaces by bringing them in to a space which by just existing within them assumes their importance. In this context, could this work have the power to influence a more general appreciation or gratitude for the spaces we inhabit daily?
In order: Deana Lawson, Frida Orupabo, Diedrick Brackens, Thomas J Price, Liu Wei, Theaster Gates, Qiu Shihua, Gregory Olympio, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.
Thank you for having me @bmwgroupculture@bmw