HAMPTON BOYER: Memory Dances
27 January – 25 February 2023
OMNI
56-57 Eastcastle Street
London
W1W 8EG
Memory Dances is the first UK exhibition of Hampton Boyer, a trailblazing Virginia-based artist known for his figurative paintings, made up of layers of bright, clear colours, geometric forms, and complex texture. His dynamic compositions tell intimate and spiritual stories, drawing on the Black American experience and Negro spiritual songs and symbols.
This is a deeply personal and poignant series of images evoking the legacy of the African American diaspora. Memory Dances features the first body of paintings that Boyer created while living and working in Richmond, Virginia, that was famously the largest slave-trading centre in the Upper South.
Using images from the antebellum south and his vivid imagination Boyer creates large scale works of vivid colour, geometric form, and raw emotion. The artist reflects on the influence of stories handed down through the generations to confront the past including Negro spirituals and more recently murals and street art.
Boyer’s extraordinary short film collaboration with musician Matthew E White, ‘Only In America’ which adeptly and emotively explores police brutality, white supremacy and systematic racism in the USA was recently released to critical acclaim.
Inspired by his curiosity of placement, Boyer continues to embark on new works, focusing on the Black body and the space in which it occupies.
HAMPTON BOYER: Memory Dances is on at OMNI from 27 January until 25 February 2023
©2023 Hampton Boyer, OMNI
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