El Anatsui at October Gallery

October Gallery presents a selection of works in metal by celebrated artist El Anatsui (b.1944, Ghana).

The exhibition will focus on a range of intricate metal sculptures. October Gallery has worked with El Anatsui since 1993, during which time, his work has received worldwide recognition. These magnificent sculptures have been collected by major international museums, including the British Museum, MoMA and the Centre Pompidou, amongst others. Over the last two decades, the works have increased in size, enhancing the external walls of museums and galleries around the world.

Throughout a distinguished forty-year career as both sculptor and teacher he has addressed a vast range of social, political and historical concerns, and embraced an equally diverse range of media and processes. Making use of tools as diverse as chainsaws, welding torches and power tools as well as developing a range of processes such as the intricate and meditative ‘sewing’ process of his later work, he has shaped found materials that range from cassava graters, railway sleepers, driftwood, iron nails and obituary printing plates, aluminium bottle-tops, etc. to create a wide variety of novel sculptural forms. El Anatsui’s iconic “bottle-top installations” have provoked a frenzy of international attention between 2002 and the present, with institutions queuing to acquire these mesmerising works. Created from many thousands of aluminium bottle-tops wired together with copper, these magnificent wall sculptures continue to excite and amaze audiences wherever they are exhibited.

One of El Anatsui’s shimmering bottle-top wall-hangings, Fresh and Fading Memories, caused a quiet sensation when, during the 2007 Venice Biennale, it transformed the historic Palazzo Fortuny when draped upon its outer facade.

“The amazing thing about working with these metallic ‘fabrics’ is that the poverty of the materials used in no way precludes the telling of rich and wonderful stories” says the artist.