Top of the World: The work of El Anatsui
A seductive golden rainfall cascades in dripping folds across the whole wall in the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh. Scottish Mission Book Depot is hung so that squiggly swathes of metal at the base of the work look like a woman’s face by Cocteau. In places, there are flashes of blue, red, and silver. The material is sensuous and voluptuous, it’s only as the viewer gets closer that the textile reveals itself to be made of flattened bottle tops and squashed cutouts of aluminium bottle labels. The piece is a specially commissioned work by the 80-year-old Ghanaian artist El Anatsui for this, the largest show of his work in the UK.
Image and image above: El Anatsui, ‘Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta’,2024. Installation views. Courtesy of Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh. Photo: Sally Jubb.
Born in Ghana in 1944 during British colonial rule, El Anatsui was brought up by his mother’s brother, a Presbyterian reverend, after his mother’s early death. Although never religious, El Anatsui used to receive books and art materials from the Scottish Missionaries Book Depot. “The composition of the new work, with its expansive field of yellow and squiggly lines of colour on the lower right, speaks to my childhood experience of using crayons provided by the Scottish Mission, as my earliest medium of self-expression,” he says. “I cannot but regard this first exhibition of mine in Edinburgh as having come full circle after several decades.”
Image: El Anatsui, ‘Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta’,2024. Installation views. Courtesy of Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh. Photo: Sally Jubb.
His childhood experiences were amplified in adolescence, as he began to understand the effects of colonialism not only in post-independence Ghana but also across Africa. His works examine colonisation, the effects of land grab, and the trade in alcohol and cloth in exchange for gold and enslaved people. He looks at political, postcolonial, and social histories in artworks made of tens of thousands of aluminium bottle tops, reclaimed from Ghanaian and Nigerian liquor bottling (and increasingly printing-press) industries stitched together. His first major work using this process, Woman’s Cloth (2001), is in the show. In the 15th-century, “trade spirits” – gin, whisky, and brandy – were introduced into West Africa, and by the 16th century, alcohol was the second most important import after textiles. Two major works, Freedom (2021) and Sovereignty (2021), explore these histories, in part in the latter by the ship-like form in the centre of the artwork and the former, with the three figures that El Anatsui says are “birds with the freedom to soar.” His basic materials are the flattened bottle tops and labels that sport the names of the liquor brands. The strong reds, golds, blacks, greens, and silvers are coincidentally the colours of traditional Kente cloths.
Where once El Anatsui scavenged for bottle tops, flattening and stitching them together himself, he now has a team of assistants who assemble the basic elements, after he views them from an overhead platform. His large scale project TsiaTsia: Searching for Connection that covered the front of the Royal Academy and now hangs across the entrance to the Talbot Rice Gallery, is a case in point. It evokes the significance of maps and landscapes, alluding to how the colonial powers restructured African boundaries.
Image: El Anatsui, ‘Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta’,2024. Installation views. Courtesy of Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh. Photo: Sally Jubb.
Although latterly El Anatsui is concerned by the earth’s fragility, his technique was not ideologically about recycling; rather the detritus from the consumption of alcohol was an allusion to the pernicious effects of colonialism on economics and politics. The works, whilst ostensibly 2-D can be assembled in different ways, assuming new and sculptural forms, something that the artist relishes. “I was playing with the idea of a ‘fabric’ of something that’s not fixed,” he says. “The folds in the material have their own way of running. I don’t create them; they happen naturally by themselves. Each time you display one it becomes an entirely new work of art.” He enjoys giving curators their freedom and witnessing the results. In Edinburgh the Gallery’s director, Professor Tessa Giblin, has experimented with one of his newer works, Royal Slumber (2023), assembling it under a darkened dome so that it looks like a chieftain asleep.
Image: El Anatsui, ‘Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta’,2024. Installation views. Courtesy of Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh. Photo: Sally Jubb.
Since 1975, El Anatsui has been a member of the faculty (now retired) at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Influences on his mark-making include Uli and Nsibidi, symbols of southeastern Nigeria, alongside Ghanaian motifs such as Adinkra symbols. His interest in patterns and symbols is evident. The fact that his father was a weaver is often considered influential, but is something that El Anatsui rejects. He is not so much interested in textile, but in fluidity and its capacity to take up different forms. Since 2007 he no longer gives titles to his textile works, but he continues to exploit the fluidity of his metal cloth. “Fresh ideas keep coming, and I now feel that it’s something endless,” he says.
Image: El Anatsui, ‘Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta’,2024. Installation views. Courtesy of Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh. Photo: Sally Jubb.
His earliest works and now some of his more recent ones are wooden reliefs, hacked violently (paralleling colonial landgrabs), from the traditional wooden trays used in the markets for food display. He carves or engraves them with Adinkra symbols. Many are like the patterns of Indigenous textiles, and their names reflect this. His newest works still employ metal from bottles but they are much boxier and almost figurative. These post-Covid works examine the state of the planet and seem somewhat despairing. When a Gate Closes (2023) has the ominous feel of a gathering of Ku Klux Klan members.
El Anatsui’s art is marked by an obsession with materiality. “My work,” he says, “is about medium and process.” Play seems an important factor, but Africa is at its heart. “My work has tried to evolve around the history of the continent,” he said in 2007, explaining his research. He examines broad historical themes, memory, migration, constraint, endurance and loss. That might sound depressing, but the artworks are uplifting, sensuous, and bewitching. He transforms metal, perceived as a stiff, rigid medium, into something sumptuous and luxurious. He uses metal tops as painters use different paints, from watercolours to thick oils, to give different effects. His works can be opaque or see-through, sculptural or two dimensional. It is a glorious show, a playground of colour and pattern. The individual print works are a little commercial seeming, but the metal is the tops.
Text by Corinne Julius
El Anatsui/Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta is on show at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh until 29 Sep 2024.
Find out more and plan your visit:
www.trg.ed.ac.uk
Born in Ghana in 1944 during British colonial rule, El Anatsui was brought up by his mother’s brother, a Presbyterian reverend, after his mother’s early death. Although never religious, El Anatsui used to receive books and art materials from the Scottish Missionaries Book Depot. “The composition of the new work, with its expansive field of yellow and squiggly lines of colour on the lower right, speaks to my childhood experience of using crayons provided by the Scottish Mission, as my earliest medium of self-expression,” he says. “I cannot but regard this first exhibition of mine in Edinburgh as having come full circle after several decades.”
His childhood experiences were amplified in adolescence, as he began to understand the effects of colonialism not only in post-independence Ghana but also across Africa. His works examine colonisation, the effects of land grab, and the trade in alcohol and cloth in exchange for gold and enslaved people. He looks at political, postcolonial, and social histories in artworks made of tens of thousands of aluminium bottle tops, reclaimed from Ghanaian and Nigerian liquor bottling (and increasingly printing-press) industries stitched together. His first major work using this process, Woman’s Cloth (2001), is in the show. In the 15th-century, “trade spirits” – gin, whisky, and brandy – were introduced into West Africa, and by the 16th century, alcohol was the second most important import after textiles. Two major works, Freedom (2021) and Sovereignty (2021), explore these histories, in part in the latter by the ship-like form in the centre of the artwork and the former, with the three figures that El Anatsui says are “birds with the freedom to soar.” His basic materials are the flattened bottle tops and labels that sport the names of the liquor brands. The strong reds, golds, blacks, greens, and silvers are coincidentally the colours of traditional Kente cloths.
Where once El Anatsui scavenged for bottle tops, flattening and stitching them together himself, he now has a team of assistants who assemble the basic elements, after he views them from an overhead platform. His large scale project TsiaTsia: Searching for Connection that covered the front of the Royal Academy and now hangs across the entrance to the Talbot Rice Gallery, is a case in point. It evokes the significance of maps and landscapes, alluding to how the colonial powers restructured African boundaries.
Although latterly El Anatsui is concerned by the earth’s fragility, his technique was not ideologically about recycling; rather the detritus from the consumption of alcohol was an allusion to the pernicious effects of colonialism on economics and politics. The works, whilst ostensibly 2-D can be assembled in different ways, assuming new and sculptural forms, something that the artist relishes. “I was playing with the idea of a ‘fabric’ of something that’s not fixed,” he says. “The folds in the material have their own way of running. I don’t create them; they happen naturally by themselves. Each time you display one it becomes an entirely new work of art.” He enjoys giving curators their freedom and witnessing the results. In Edinburgh the Gallery’s director, Professor Tessa Giblin, has experimented with one of his newer works, Royal Slumber (2023), assembling it under a darkened dome so that it looks like a chieftain asleep.
Since 1975, El Anatsui has been a member of the faculty (now retired) at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Influences on his mark-making include Uli and Nsibidi, symbols of southeastern Nigeria, alongside Ghanaian motifs such as Adinkra symbols. His interest in patterns and symbols is evident. The fact that his father was a weaver is often considered influential, but is something that El Anatsui rejects. He is not so much interested in textile, but in fluidity and its capacity to take up different forms. Since 2007 he no longer gives titles to his textile works, but he continues to exploit the fluidity of his metal cloth. “Fresh ideas keep coming, and I now feel that it’s something endless,” he says.
His earliest works and now some of his more recent ones are wooden reliefs, hacked violently (paralleling colonial landgrabs), from the traditional wooden trays used in the markets for food display. He carves or engraves them with Adinkra symbols. Many are like the patterns of Indigenous textiles, and their names reflect this. His newest works still employ metal from bottles but they are much boxier and almost figurative. These post-Covid works examine the state of the planet and seem somewhat despairing. When a Gate Closes (2023) has the ominous feel of a gathering of Ku Klux Klan members.
El Anatsui’s art is marked by an obsession with materiality. “My work,” he says, “is about medium and process.” Play seems an important factor, but Africa is at its heart. “My work has tried to evolve around the history of the continent,” he said in 2007, explaining his research. He examines broad historical themes, memory, migration, constraint, endurance and loss. That might sound depressing, but the artworks are uplifting, sensuous, and bewitching. He transforms metal, perceived as a stiff, rigid medium, into something sumptuous and luxurious. He uses metal tops as painters use different paints, from watercolours to thick oils, to give different effects. His works can be opaque or see-through, sculptural or two dimensional. It is a glorious show, a playground of colour and pattern. The individual print works are a little commercial seeming, but the metal is the tops.
Text by Corinne Julius
El Anatsui/Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta is on show at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh until 29 Sep 2024.
Find out more and plan your visit:
www.trg.ed.ac.uk