Acclaimed Ghanaian artist El Anatsui creates his meticulously-assembled, awe-inspiring sculptural pieces out of found objects, reclaiming and repurposing metal scraps and waste found in Ghana and Nigeria and transporting them overseas, right into the midst of Edinburgh’s old town, in the Talbot Rice Gallery. Showcasing a broad range of artwork from the past thirty years of his lifetime, Anatsui has conceptualised and created the new piece Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta (2024) especially for this gallery space. It stretches its magnificent golden-yellow, wave-like surface across all thirteen metres of wall space, dynamic and alive, capturing a spirit of the natural environment and its forms as well as showcasing the collective work of many human beings.
This sense of dynamism is present throughout all of Anatsui’s work as he suffuses discarded materials like aluminium bottle tops and printing press sheets with a new life and purpose, stitching together thousands of disparate pieces with copper wire in order to create a wholly unique and beautiful artwork. Anatsui’s patchwork approach to his work seems to speak towards the interconnectedness of societies and human beings across the planet, highlighting the significance of the collective in comparison with the individual.
As well as showcasing Anatsui’s epic, expansive sculptural pieces that he is primarily known for, in the upper galleries of the Talbot Rice hang a collection of smaller-scale, delicate prints that utilise a variety of layered and collaged printmaking approaches to create beautiful, shimmering images as in Cadium-Vermillion Eclipse (2016) and Blue Metallic Eclipse (2016), both part of a series named the Eclipse Suite. These works evoke a sense of quietude and contemplation, seemingly documenting a momentary shift in focus from human connections across oceans and continents to even greater, unifying universal themes. Indeed, a defining feature of Anatsui’s outlook and artwork is its tendency to urge visitors to think outside themselves, away from the individual and towards the world and universe around them.
Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta is in its final week at the Talbot Rice Gallery, open until 29th September 2024.
“El Anatsui, Red Block, 2010” by Thomas Hawk is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.