Tanoa Sasraku – Modern Artwork Society
Friday Dispatch – 25 November 2022
Tanoa Sasraku
Vardaxoglou Gallery, Soho
14 October – 17 December 2022
Tanoa Sasraku (b. 1995) is understood for her ongoing analysis into her private relationship to the recollections, mythologies, and vitality saved throughout the British rural and coastal landscapes. Throughout her unsettled youth in Plymouth, Sasraku discovered solace and a way of freedom within the close-by windswept moorlands of Dartmoor. Her first solo-exhibition in London at Vardaxoglou Gallery focuses on her Terratypes, a current collection of works on paper which may be described as sculptural hybrids of portray, drawing, collage, and printmaking. Introduced at Spike Island, Bristol, in a serious solo-show this summer time for the primary time, they proceed the younger artist’s exploration of British geology and topography that’s knowledgeable by her perspective as a lesbian artist of British-Ghanaian background.
Every of Sasraku’s Terratypes is comprised of a number of sheets of clean newsprint which she hand-stains with million-year-old earth pigments foraged from landscapes vital to her. For instance, we are able to see wealthy orange pigment from Dartmoor or yellow ochre from the Isle of Skye. She then machine stitches the stacks of paper collectively earlier than soaking them in rivers, seawater, and bogs. After that, the artist rigorously tears away strips of paper so the colour-saturated and patterned layers beneath develop into seen, revealing the materiality and reminiscence of the land, like microchips storing information.
When taking an intimate take a look at the traditional and mysterious wanting collages, the staggered shards of paper reveal a recurring embossed or printed geometric sample — a motif deriving from a Scottish tartan, impressed by her Caledonian companion. The blocky design additionally pertains to electrical circuitry and the move of a deep-rooted vitality that appears to radiate from the collages.
Her working course of includes laborious pattern-cutting, which attracts on her Ghanian heritage. For instance, the fringed border of the Terratypes resemble the textile utility of the Fante Asafo flags of Coastal Ghana. While light-brown walnut frames host the brighter Terratypes, similar to Redgate Terratype, 2022, which communicate to the artist, reminding her of life on the coast, the collection Mire Horse, 2022, is offered in dark-brown frames, referring to the cycle of demise and decay that’s important to the moors.
Her sculptural hybrids current a brand new means of participating with the panorama. They are often understood as distinctive portraits of the geological range of the British countryside, mapping surprising connections between rural environments, buried histories, private emotional recollections, and the vitality saved in earth.
She makes use of foraged historical mineral pigments to infuse her work with the land itself. By inscribing herself as a lesbian lady of color into the distant panorama, she powerfully questions notions of possession over the British countryside. Tanoa Sasraku’s Terratypes skilfully tie collectively textile traditions of each her Ghanaian and British heritage.
Christine Takengny
Senior Curator
7 Royalty Mews (Dean Street), Soho, London, W1D 3AS
Opening Occasions: Wednesday to Saturday, 11am–6pm
Exhibition open till 17 December 2022
