Harold Offeh - The Mothership Collective 2:0

This autumn, artist Harold Offeh will transform our front gallery into a sci-fi playscape, creating collaborative encounters between audiences and artists. 

The Mothership Collective 2:0 will invite visitors of all ages to imagine potential futures by visiting stations throughout the exhibition, each one drawing on sci-fi, futurisms and utopian thinking. Using sound, text and objects, visitors will be encouraged to explore their creativity and have collaborative encounters that explore what different futures might look like.

The project will revisit concepts the artist explored in The Mothership Collective in 2006 which saw Offeh invite fellow artists, dancers and musicians to create work with members of the public inspired by ideas of Afrofuturist mythology in the music and performances of George Clinton and Sun-Ra.

For two decades Harold Offeh has produced work including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. His playful and often provocative works employ humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture.

The exhibition will invite and support exploration of future possibilities for play and interaction. Inspired by repurposed and recycled materials, the space will be defined by play areas investigating landscape and habitats, identity through costume, patterns through sound and sensory experience, and prophesies and prediction through writing. Visitors will be encouraged to make noise, interact with the exhibition, and explore through play.

Co-commissioned by Tramway and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

More about the Artist

Harold Offeh is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of histories. He employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including Tate Britain and Tate Modern, South London Gallery, Turf Projects, London, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, Wysing Art Centre, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, MAC VAL, France, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark and Art Tower Mito.

He studied Critical Fine Art Practice at The University of Brighton, MA Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art and recently completed a PhD by practice exploring the activation of Black Album covers through durational performance. He lives in Cambridge and works in London. He previously held the role of Reader in Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University and was a visiting tutor at Goldsmiths College and The Slade School of Art, UCL, London. He is currently a tutor in MA Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art.

Header image: 
Harold Offeh, Hail the New Prophets, Bold Tendencies 2021.
Courtesy and copyright of Bold Tendencies