Goodman Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by Chemu Ng’ok – a new body of work created while on residency at Gasworks earlier this year. The show occupies the first floor gallery and is Ng’ok’s first solo exhibition in the UK, following her first institutional exhibition at Fondazione ICA Milano earlier this year.
Ng’ok works primarily in painting and drawing to investigate the personal, psychological, political and spiritual dynamics of human interactions and relationships. While at Gasworks, the artist continued to explore these core contemplations in her practice, resulting in works created with energetic lines that contour and combine individual and collective bodies. These figures offer reflections on the body, its physicality and its conceptual manifestation. Here, her linework becomes both the narrator and the interrogator of entrenched power structures.
Abstract bodies in a constant state of flux emerge and multiply across the length and breadth of the canvases, interrogating tensions from contemporary politics in Kenya and wider Africa. This amalgamation of the singular and communal has been a strategy Ng’ok has used throughout her practice to push against authority, systemic violence and the long-standing legacy of colonialism.
Artworks
About
Chemu Ng'ok
Chemu Ng’ok (b. 1989, Nairobi, Kenya) uses painting and drawing to explore the sociopolitical, physical and psychological aspects of human relationships.
Recent solo shows include The Longing (2023) at Goodman Gallery in London, An impression that may possibly last forever (2023) at ICA Milano, Still Waters Run (2022) at Matthew Brown Gallery in Los Angeles and An Enigma (2021) at CENTRAL FINE in Miami Beach.
Recent group presentations include The ‘t’ is Silent (2022) at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle, Belgium; Central Sounds (2022) at Luhring Augustine in New York; Fire Figure Fantasy (2022) at the ICA Miami; There is Always One Direction (2021-2022) at The de la Cruz Collection in Miami; Aletheia (2021) at CENTRAL FINE in Miami and Songs for Sabotage (2018) at the New Museum Triennial in New York.
She received her MFA from Rhodes University, Grahamstown in 2017 and was the recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s Visual and Performing Arts of Africa Masters Bursary in 2016.
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Paul Maheke
Paul Maheke (b.1985, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France) lives and works in Montpellier. Across various forms and artistic disciplines, Maheke has sustained a long-term exploration into the ways that marginalised bodies, narratives and histories are made visible and invisible. Resisting a probing of identity that sits solely within the framework of identity politics, Maheke’s trajectory has continuously been channelled through spectral sensations. The artist has called in ghosts, spirits and non-human beings into his works to invite a re-orientation to the way that we, the audience, are able to perceive; which is to say, to reframe the way that we are able to see, feel and listen.
In reconfiguring the sensible, Maheke seeks to shift the dominant systems of discourse production and understanding that heavily depend on representation, visibility and legibility as the ultimate forms of truth, value and/or power. Instead, the artist nurtures the formation of a self through a state of in-betweenness; one where esoteric, spiritual, queer and embodied knowledge(s) help Maheke garner the potential for prophecy.
His work has been shown in solo presentations at Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales (2024); Kunsthalle Bratislava (2023); High Line Art, New York (2022), The Renaissance Society, Chicago, Illinois (2021); Collection Pinault, Paris, France (2021); Chisenhale Gallery, London, England (2019); Vleeshal Centre for Contemporary Art, Middelburg, Netherlands (2018); and South London Art Gallery, London, England (2016). He has participated in group exhibitions and festivals at institutions including Tate Modern, England (2024); Rudolfinum, Prague (2023); ICA Miami, Florida (2019); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2018); and Serpentine Galleries, London, England (2016). He has been featured in major international exhibitions including Biennale du Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo (2022); Glasgow International, Scotland (2021); 58th Venice Biennale, Italy (2019); Performa, New York (2019); Baltic Triennial 13, Estonia (2018); and Manifesta 12, Palermo, Italy (2018).
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