‘El Anatsui: Five Decades’ marks the first major exhibition of El Anatsui’s art in Australia. The exhibition presents an interrelated body of work from the late 1970s to present day that combines the local vernacular of Ghana and Nigeria with the history and trajectory of abstract art.
Much of Anatsui’s work is made from discarded and repurposed materials including found wood, aluminium printing plates, tin boxes and liquor bottle tops. His large-scale metallic works are formally complex, suggestive of the contours of landscape, cartography, and the language of abstract painting. They reflect a politically engaged artist who probes the histories of colonial and post-colonial Africa alongside themes of consumption, waste and the environment.
Carriageworks
7 January to 6 March, 2016
Sydney
Stressed World, 2011, found aluminum and copper wire, 440 x 600cm, installed dimensions
©El Anatsui. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
