Emmanuel Awuni
In July 2024 we invited Emmanuel Awuni to the Roberts Institute of Art Residency in Scotland.
Emmanuel used his time in residence to continue his exploration of rhythm and attention by engaging with the rural landscape of Cortachy and experimenting with making new works in clay.
Emmanuel is an artist who works across painting, sculpture and performance. Influenced by African oral traditions, he is fascinated by the connections between different diasporic sounds like hip-hop, jazz, reggae and Afrobeats. During his stay, Emmanuel drew inspiration from the local countryside, which had originally sparked his interest during a 2023 visit while writer Vanessa Onwuemezi was in residence.
‘How can I fit into the rhythm of this place and breathe and have time to think and actually absorb all the information that it's given.’
The flow and shifting rhythms of the river South Esk, which runs through the residency grounds, became a particular source of inspiration. Emmanuel swam in the river every day, and in doing so, focused on slowing down and letting go to help him tune into the landscape and materials he was using.
‘You know, there's a flow to water. There's a rhythm to water. You don't fight water, you flow with it. And if you resist water, you're going to pay the price, and eventually you're going to yield and flow with it. So my whole time here was to really learn how to flow with the environment. Flow with with the birds, like, really pay attention to how they're riding the rhythm. [...] I really got from this river, is that you can take your time to breathe.’
Emmanuel used his time in the residency studio to prepare for an exhibition with Divine Southgate-Smith at Public Gallery in London, titled Spit. Thinking back to his first encounter with clay in Ghana, also by a river, he was interested in seeking out the play and ease he experienced when first working with the material as he sculpted heads and vases.
Taking inspiration from a particular line in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), ‘The cistern contains; the fountain overflows,’ Emmanuel made a new clay vase which will hold water from the River South Esk.
Early memories of playing the traditional West African board game Oware in Ghana, where rhythm and observation are key, have been a major influence on Emmanuel’s thinking. For him, Oware is not just a game of winning and losing but is one focused on maintaining play and creating a continuous rhythmic interaction with a partner. His thinking around the rhythm of the game and the river resulted in a site-specific work next to the spot where Emmanuel bathed every day. One-to-One With God (2024) is a game of Oware frozen in time, with its cowrie shells and lotus-like leaves set in resin.
‘I wanted the sculpture to really exemplify this idea of grace, the grace of the water flowing by, the grace of the breeze that brushes you, that lets you know to breathe. So rather than just labouring intensely on this object, I'm like, but what is this object gonna give me as a person? So then the piece just started morphing into something, something more that felt light [...] the whole point is, when you see that sculpture [you can] feel the breeze of a thought.'
To celebrate the end of his residency, Emmanuel shared a work-in-progress performance developed from these ideas and the sculptures he produced, alongside a studio visit with a local audience and invited guests.
In preparation for his time in residence, Emmanuel invited Divine Southgate-Smith to collaborate on a playlist, featuring music by Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, André 3000 and many more. Listen below:
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