Emma Prempeh, Kyugwe, 2024, Oil, Acrylic and Schlag metal on canvas, 200 x 300 cm (detail)

Prempeh's latest body of works to be premiered this autumn and in 2025, perceive a magical realist interpretation of ‘home' - a spatial and emotional reckoning of what that means to her as a Londoner, of Caribbean and African heritage, and living between Uganda, East Africa and the UK. Vignettes of domestic interiors, landscapes, family and animal companions are portrayed in this presentation which will feature new painting and a multimedia installation. 

Emma Prempeh lives and works in London. She studied at Goldsmiths University of London graduating in 2019 winning the Alumno/Space bursary award for 2020. She recently attended MA Painting at the Royal College of Art under the LeverHulme Trust Arts Scholarship winning the Valerie Beston Trust Arts award for 2022.

The starting point to Prempeh’s paintings is the matter of blackness – the tonal properties of the colour establishes the ground to her paintings and a cinematic basis to invoke and project memories of events, people, and places to emphasise an appreciation of ancestral time and relationships, selfhood and transformation. Schlag metal, a brass alloy of copper and zinc imitative of gold leaf, is a material that Prempeh applies to selected areas of her often large-scale paintings. Over time this oxidises creating slow, live visual changes that animate the image and create a meta-narrative around our experiences of the passing of time, memory and its representation. Prempeh occasionally experiments with projected still and moving imagery to create painting installations that invite other experiential and performative encounters with her work.

Opening Hours

Tue - Fri: 10am to 6pm
Sat: 11am to 6pm

Location:

24 Cork Street
London, W1S 3NG

Text and pictures, copyright tiwani contemporary and the artist