Creating a public learning space and using percussion as a pluralistic way of looking at culture, to rethink singularity, exclusion, and performer-audience relationships
Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom Before, During & After: Here Now (How To Keep The Balance) 2023, Installation view photographed by Jules Lister
Image Description: A dark room showing two projection screens, one large, one small. The larger projection on the left shows a close up of sound-proofing foam that is often used in recording studios, but is tinged in a warm orange light. The project on the right shows what looks like a section of a drum set and some speakers.
Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom’s recent exhibition “Before, During & After: Here Now (How To Keep The Balance)” at Site Gallery, emerged from other recent projects where the artist learned to play the drums, often in live non-performative settings, sometimes using percussion or inviting other performers to play as well. Within this work, Boakye-Yiadom is interested in the possible universality of percussion, noting that many cultures have their own percussion culture that is ever-evolving. The work asks: How do we pick up where someone else left off and how do we move into plurality through percussion?
Boakye-Yiadom writes:
‘There is often a notion of singularity and exclusion within culture, and in contrast to that, I’m interested in showing the idea of plurality and thus I have been thinking of how to show that. Often within the art field, there is this idea of the genius that seems counterproductive and I’m interested in breaking away from the ‘us and them’ way of viewing the world. There is also the thought of how most cultural ideas come from an interaction.’
Thinking of the dominance of visibility and association in performance, Boakye-Yiadom became interested in modes of working with percussion that would conceal the performer, asking ‘If we see performance as something that is carried through beings, what happens when that is removed?’ The performer thus became—in the artist’s own words—’an appeaser’ and the audience ‘a council’.
Because the work is made in situ, there is also a formal aspect to why the performer is concealed: audiences are able to see the artist in a process of making: ‘I’m not performing, I’m learning.’
Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom Before, During & After: Here Now (How To Keep The Balance) 2023, Installation view photographed by Jules Lister
Image Description: A dark room with carpeted floors and curtains covering the walls. There are 2 overlapping projector screens on the left and 1 projector screen on the adjacent side. The projector screens display various close up views of percussion instruments.
With each iteration of learning, at for example Goldsmiths CCA, Quench Gallery in Margate, and Southwark Park Galleries, the work presents different takes on how to make those learning processes part of the work, i.e. other ways in which to show the progress, which reflects the support that the work is given, since ‘I don’t learn outside of the support. When an exhibition/ residency ends, I pack up and stop.’ In that sense, the project is also very much a critique of the support structures needed for work to be made, amplified, and heard.
In line with support, process, and performance, the exhibition at Site Gallery became another iteration of showing the artist’s process of learning, in this case specifically concentrating on learning one sound piece for the duration of the exhibition.
‘By trying to depict my learning from pre-recorded material,’ the artist notes, ‘leaving the body out of the frame and sonically letting everything be there, this is a new way to go about it in this iteration. So what is at Site Gallery, is effectively a 3-4 months long process of progress and getting to grips with the mentioned things, and to show a full range of personality sonically. At the same time, there is the idea of interactions. When people came into the learning space, they are not responding, but adding their reality, which in turn influences me and changes the direction of how I see things and ways in which culture can be depicted with human interaction. For example, there was Joe Ryan, one of the collaborators, who came in once a month and was gradually showing me the next part I would learn on the drums, which intrinsically influenced the work.’
Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom Before, During & After: Here Now (How To Keep The Balance) 2023, Installation view photographed by Jules Lister
Image Description: A dark room with carpeted floors and curtains covering the walls. There are 2 overlapping projector screens on the left and 1 projector screen on the adjacent side. The projector screens display various close up views of percussion instruments.
In the exhibition space, a chronological 4 hours 30 min audio process was heard alongside a 6-channel video that was being edited alongside self-produced footage by myself and material from the three collaborators. The collaborators all came from a range of different fields of documentation, from fashion, which is so concerned with the body, to the cinematic field, to installation.
The exhibition space shows a 4 hours 30 min long 6-channel video piece that uses audio recordings and moving images consisting of self-produced footage by the artist and material from the three collaborators (from the fields of documentation, fashion, cinema, and installation). The installation features two small projectors on one side, a flat LCD monitor, two cube monitors, and a projector that occupies the entire back wall of the gallery. The footage itself show close ups of the drum kit, the corner of a wall, or picture frame, and often jumps across space. Visitors entering the space would experience the piece at different moments, there is no clear start or end, and were invited into it as a more meditative experience of listening and encountering.
Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom Before, During & After: Here Now (How To Keep The Balance) 2023, Installation view photographed by Jules Lister
Image Description: A dark room with carpeted floors and curtains covering the walls. There are 2 projector screens, one free standing, the other projected onto the wall. The screens display various close up views of percussion instruments.
In terms of public engagement, Site Gallery has a well-versed cafe that is an important spot for visitors of all ages. The exhibition also became a site for educational groups coming in, from local schools and the two Universities situated in Sheffield, with students on art practice based programmes visiting as well. The artist also presented an artist talk in the gallery and there were several reading groups connected to the show (led by singer and producer Robyn Haddon) focusing on subjects relating to the exhibition.
Links to reviews:
https://ourfaveplaces.co.uk/whats-on/before-during-after-here-now-how-to-keep-the-balance
https://corridor8.co.uk/article/before-during-after-here-now-how-to-keep-the-balance-appau-jnr-boakye-yiadom/
Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom
Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom is a London-based cross-disciplinary artist, predominantly working with sound, photography & video. In more recent years these mediums are used within a live performance/ process setting to create work within the duration of exhibitions. Making the work generative in the sense that something can be created within one exhibition that will eventually be shown in another at a later date. These materials often find themselves in an installation format working interdependently.
Exploring ways of looking and hearing that move away from a linear trajectory and has been exploring through the presence of the body and its removal.
