Opening 14 October 2022, we are delighted to present Tanoa Sasraku's (b. 1995) first solo exhibition in London, following her major recent solo institutional exhibition at Spike Island, Bristol.
The exhibition focuses on Sasraku's Terratypes: heavily worked sheets of blank newsprint which are hand-rubbed with foraged natural pigments in Dartmoor and the Scottish Highlands, where they take on geological and geographical information in ochre, graphite and manganese. The sheets are then stacked, cut and stitched together to form abstract geometric compositions, before being steeped in water. Shards of paper are then gesturally torn away, revealing layers that both expose and encrypt details about the materiality of the land, like microchips storing data or a clan's tartan cloth.
A large-scale monograph on Tanoa Sasraku's Terratypes will be published mid-November by Vardaxoglou, featuring contributions from a number of writers.
Biography
Tanoa Sasraku (b. 1995, Plymouth) graduated from Goldsmiths College (2018) and is currently enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools. Sasraku's practice shifts between sculpture, drawing and filmmaking, juxtaposing and performing British, Black, Ghanaian and queer cultural histories. A major solo institutional exhibition of her work took place at Spike Island, Bristol, 2022. Sasraku's first solo exhibition in London will take place at Vardaxoglou, October 2022. Recent selected solo and group exhibitions include Radical Landscapes, Tate Liverpool, UK (2022); TESTAMENT, CCA Goldsmiths, London, UK (2022); O'Pierrot: Hands and Plaids (online), Alex Vardaxoglou, London (2021); A Tower to Say Goodbye, General Release, Chelsea Sorting Office (2021); Recession Grimace, Klosterruine, Berlin, (2020); Tanoa Sasraku: O'Pierrot, LUX Moving Image, London (2020); Resist: be modern (again), John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK (2019); Nashashibi/Skaer – Thinking through other artists, Tate St Ives, UK (2019). Sasraku's moving image works have been screened at the BFI Southbank, as part of the 18th London Short Film Festival (2021); Selected X, VideoClub online and touring (2020); Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, Berwick-upon-Tweed (2019). In 2021, Sasraku was awarded the Arts Foundation Futures Award for Visual Arts.
Press release courtesy Vardaxoglou Gallery.
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