Tiwani Contemporary opens its 2024 London programme with the group exhibition Polymythologies, featuring Leo Robinson, Ivan Forde and Richard Ayodeji Ikhide.

Polymythologies introduces how each artist draws upon a wide constellation of references to a globalized collective unconscious, classical allegory, science fiction, and gaming to explore and ground their aesthetic propositions and engagement to create new mythologies, that foreground excavations, migrations, liminal experiences, and transformations that collapse historical and futuristic perspectives to speculate or speak directly to present conditions.

Leo Robinson will present works that elaborate his research and interest in an array of ancient and modern visual treatises, cosmological drawings and artefacts that observe ritual and the cultivation of belief and knowledge systems. Ceremonial attire, and a series of new collages inspired by his recent visit to the world heritage site, Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove in Osun State, Nigeria, considers the tensions of returnee diasporas to origin sites of worship.

Ivan Forde’s commitment to the literary genre of the epic narrative depicts the journey and encounters of the Hero protagonist, guided by the poetics of celestial skies and primordial waters. The scenarios Forde’s epic serializes, appear as two and three dimensional compositions: hanging silk and Kozo paper scrolls, painting on linen, mural, moving image and expanded notions of photography are proposed for this exhibition as site-specific sculpture; a tailor made paper suit, is performed and activated in London as a wearable cyanotype, that transforms over the period of the exhibition as a long exposure portrait of London skies.

For Polymythologies, Richard Ayodeji Ikhide eschews conventional paper dimensions, and transposes his inimitable drawing style to an irregular and variably shaped format of mid and large-scale watercolors mimicking ancient Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets or amulets. The works vignette the exploits of a society of demi-gods in progress; initiates learning and performing rites to move onto the next stages of their own personal prowess and evolution.

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