Woody De Othello In Conversation With Ekow Eshun
Join us at 6pm on 7 March for a tour of the exhibition with Woody De Othello and writer and curator Ekow Eshun. Othello and Eshun will walk us through the presentation, exploring Othello's multidisciplinary practice and new works.
Woody De Othello's sculptures, paintings and installations imagine a world in which the things that populate our domestic lives metamorphise into syncretic, humanoid objects. Working primarily in ceramic, wood and bronze, he creates assemblages of everyday artefacts - phones, television remotes, clocks, lamps, calendars, pipes, shoes, and light switches - that he stacks on glazed ceramic stools, chairs, radiators, and step ladders. "The objects mimic actions that humans perform," says Othello. "They're extensions of our own actions. We use phones to speak and to listen, clocks to tell time, vessels to hold things, and our bodies are indicators of all of those."
Ekow Eshun is a writer and curator. He is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth, overseeing the foremost public art programme in the UK, and the former Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. He is curator, most recently of 'The Time is Always Now', currently on show at the National Portrait Gallery, London and was awarded the Curatorial Prize 2023 by the Association for Art History for In the Black Fantastic at the Hayward Gallery, 2022. He is the author of books including Black Gold of the Sun, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, and Africa State of Mind, nominated for the Lucie Photo Book Prize. Described by The Guardian as a 'cultural polymath', he is the writer and presenter of documentaries including the BBC film Dark Matter: A History of the Afrofuture and the BBC Radio 4 series White Mischief. His writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer and Wired. He holds an honorary doctorate from London Metropolitan University.
