The Kuenyehia Trust For Contemporary Art Presents Catharsis II
The Kuenyehia Trust for Contemporary Art presents Catharsis II, a sequel exhibition to Catharsis I, featuring artists Frederick Botchway, John Edem Tamakloe and Simon Bowman Jr.
In 2019, The Kuenyehia Trust for Contemporary Art, supported by the MTN Ghana Foundation, continues its efforts in supporting shortlisted artists of the 2018 Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art through 4 exhibitions dubbed “Catharsis”.
The second exhibition of the series, dubbed Catharsis II will once again focus on artists working with photography.
Edem Tamakloe’s body of work is intrinsically inspired by his architectural background. The self taught photographer invites his audience to see their immediate environment with a novel regard, focusing on the indiscernible, heights, lights, shadows and volumes.
Fredrick Botchway couples photography and painting into single pieces through a reinvented oil painting technique. His recent body of work takes cues from Western Academic painting traditions, iconographies of babies in medieval paintings, and Ghana’s baby photography scene in the late 20th century. The work perhaps prompts us to ask if anything new can be made from those forms.
Simon Bowman Junior investigates traditional photography techniques and processes in his recent work, employing 35mm photographic film, as well as other staples of analogue photography. The artist aims to, perhaps, join the movement expanding photography beyond a tool of documentation and into artistic abstraction.
Exhibition Details
Artists: Frederick Botchway, John Edem Tamakloe and Simon Bowman Jr.
Title: Catharsis II
Dates: Thursday, 25th July – Thursday 12th September 2019
Address: No. 20 Tedzi Street, South Tesano (Kuenyehia Trust for Contemporary Art on Google Maps)
Google Maps link: https://tinyurl.com/y2g82m8n
Opening Times: Mon-Fri 9am – 5pm
Contact Details
Essé Dabla-Attikpo
0207998332
esse@kuenyehiaprize.org
Social media: @kuenyehiaprize
Note to Editors
Supported by: The MTN Ghana Foundation
The Kuenyehia Trust for Contemporary Art
A not-for-profit organization established by Elikem Nutifafa Kuenyehia in 2014 to support emerging and mid-career Ghanaian and African artists, advance contemporary Ghanaian art locally and internationally, promote a vibrant market for art locally and encourage art literacy in Ghanaian society.
The flagship of the Trust, the Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art identifies, rewards and helps develop Ghana’s most outstanding artists between the ages of 25 and 40. Winners and runners-up benefitted from prize money and materials totalling thirty-five thousand cedis (GHS 35,000) in 2018. The Prize contributes to the Ghanaian art ecosystem by inspiring Ghanaian and African artists to produce work that will attract both local and international audiences.
Catharsis – Cambridge Dictionary’s Definition
Catharsis is the process of releasing strong emotions through a particular activity or experience, such as writing or theatre, in a way that helps you to understand those emotions
Artist Biographies
John Edem Tamakloe
Though a Master’s degree holder in Architecture, Edem is, as well, a self-taught photographer. With photography as his medium, he engages the often overlooked parts of our contemporary spaces, including the structures that inhabit them, which nonetheless contribute to our experience of said spaces. Born 4th August, 1989, the Ghanaian artist studied architecture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, for both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He was a participating artist in ‘The Language That We Speak’, Pop-Up Creative Hub, at the British Council Innovation Centre, Accra (2017). Edem was also a finalist for 2018’s Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art.
Fredrick Botchway
Born on 16th May, 1996 in Accra, Ghana, Fredrick Botchway trained in painting and has great interest in photography. Currently living and working in both Kumasi and Accra, Botchway’s practice derives its basis from art history, specifically the Western Academic period. The body of work he produces critiques, reinvents and reinterprets what is traditionally known as an oil painting. The artist approaches his process with an experimental attitude, paying attention to the iconography and materiality of the medium (oil paint). Part of the work he produces also incorporates photography and various editing processes. His work merges these academic tendencies with minimalist sensibilities to produce work that is simultaneously new and familiar.
Simon Bowman Junior
Shortlisted for 2018’s Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art, Simon Bowman Junior was born in Accra, Ghana in 1989. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. Bowman has always been fascinated by photography. The interest was cultivated through his teenage years and further developed in university. After completing his degree, he delved more into his photographic practice. Currently living and working in Accra, his practice involves experimenting with analogue darkroom photographic chemistry; manipulating chemicals, materials, techniques and processes to see where their functional and breaking points are. Effectively, pushing photography past documentation into abstraction. His work has been exhibited in ‘Cornfields in Accra’ (2016) and ‘Orderly Disorderly’ (2017), both at the Museum of Science and Technology, Accra.
