Paul Maheke, Chemu Ng'ok | London | 2023

Goodman Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by Chemu Ng’ok – a new body of work created while on residency at Gasworks earlier this year. The show occupies the first floor gallery and is Ng’ok’s first solo exhibition in the UK, following her first institutional exhibition at Fondazione ICA Milano earlier this year.

Ng’ok works primarily in painting and drawing to investigate the personal, psychological, political and spiritual dynamics of human interactions and relationships. While at Gasworks, the artist continued to explore these core contemplations in her practice, resulting in works created with energetic lines that contour and combine individual and collective bodies. These figures offer reflections on the body, its physicality and its conceptual manifestation. Here, her linework becomes both the narrator and the interrogator of entrenched power structures.

Abstract bodies in a constant state of flux emerge and multiply across the length and breadth of the canvases, interrogating tensions from contemporary politics in Kenya and wider Africa. This amalgamation of the singular and communal has been a strategy Ng’ok has used throughout her practice to push against authority, systemic violence and the long-standing legacy of colonialism.