Drawing in Social Space 3: Go To Town

Drawing In Social Space 3

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GO TO TOWN Drawing In Social Space 3

Al Hassan Issah The Blue Youth Bermondsey Camberwell College of Arts & Drawing Room

April 2023

Drawing in Social Space is a knowledge exchange partnership between Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London and Drawing Room, two Southwark based institutions. Occurring when Drawing Room has no premises, the partnership seeks to explore drawing beyond the gallery walls, expanding and exploring practice and knowledge, whilst creating connections locally and globally.

Ghanaian artist Al Hassan Issah is interested in the material and object culture in the “Zongo” slum communities within the city of Kumasi where he grew up.Taking his environment as the source of inspiration, he explores the language of gates, their patterns, structures, stories and journeys to investigate ideas on theatricality and objecthood, reveal the legacies of colonialism, and raise questions on what drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture could be in our contemporary world.

For this project, Al Hassan collaborated with a group of 10 to 14 year olds from The Blue Youth Centre in Bermondsey to engage with their locality and design new gates, exploring what they would like to project about their own identities. Over three days, the youth centre became an active studio filled with drawings, rubbings and photographs made alongside Al Hassan on zoom, in his studio in Kumasi. Mirroring the artist’s creative process, Bermondsey became the source of inspiration and the gathering of materials, textures and patterns for the young people. Enacting a sense of rediscovery, they explored the familiar through a new lens of creativity.

Walks through the neighbourhood instigated the group to share personal stories, local histories and memories of places as participants took turns in tracing the routes to their schools, local park and playground. Time was spent at Drawing Room’s new development site to investigate the key elements of its austere, grey mesh metal gate and to suggest the changes they as young people would instate to make it welcoming and accessible to the public. A large blackboard and chalk were placed in front of the youth centre each day inviting passers-by to answer the question What is Bermondsey?.

The group constructed newly imagined gates working with an amalgamation of collaged drawings, graphite rubbings, research on iron work, process photographs and images of personal artefacts, revealing their identities and heritages. Considering Bermondsey as an exhibition site and ideas of public art, they placed photocopies of their work along with a drawing from Al Hassan around shops, markets, walls and buses. Simultaneously, Al Hassan placed copies of their drawings on Kumasi’s walls and streets, extending their reach across Ghana and UK. The process was mediated by zoom and captured live on phones.

This act of democratizing access by situating drawings in the city is inherent to Al Hassan’s practice, a strategy for public engagement countering the exclusivity of the gallery space. It is analogous to local modes of advertising in Kumasi and across Ghana where streets are awash with new and effacing posters ranging from colourful funeral obituaries to rental notices. It is a cyclical process: returning the drawings to the city which inspired their creation.

Two BA Drawing students, Simrandeep Chana and Sheniz Elmaz- Golding, supported the co-design and delivery of the workshops, gaining relevant experience in research, creative facilitation and project development.

Inspired by Al Hassan’s work and the project, and linking to their own practices, they produced new writing.

Reflecting on their shared encounters and processes, the artist has employed drawing, painting, writing and psychogeography to create three artworks and a poem that are in dialogue with those of the young people.

The title Go To Town originates from the curriculum ethos of the Department of Painting and Sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana where Al Hassan received his education. It served as a conceptual framework for the project and challenged the participants to expand their idea of drawing by going outside and exploring their environment anew with an open mindset; to see the city as a perennial source of inspiration and investigation.

“Is it the materials that lead you to town or is it the town that leads you to the materials?” Al Hassan

Interview with Al Hassan Who inspired you to make art? Aya, 11 God did. I have been always fascinated about this simple, yet complex idea of creation. It always excited me to think that someone created us all. Hence, I wanted to be a creator too.

I wanted to make things that exist as a result of my practical decisions. That was made possible because of art. I was always drawing as a little kid with my friends in school and at home. And people (friends and family) were always fascinated by the things I drew. This also kept me wanting to do more, so I could show more.

What made you an artist? Alice, 13 Practice, consistency, and determination. Art, like any other profession is very difficult and competitive.

Especially when you decide to take it on as a full-time career. I started with a lot of friends as a kid, but being serious and always working made me an artist.

What do you rate an artwork out of 10?

Faith, 13 I might be a little biased with how I will rate it Faith but forgive me J, I will give an artwork 9.5.

How did you begin your art career? Did you always like art as a child? Isioma, 14 Yes, I always loved art as a little kid and always wanted to be an artist. But career-wise I began after high school. I started making portraiture at a fee to buy more materials and sold some paintings at the cultural centre till I went to art school to study painting and sculpture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). That was/still is the best and most important decision I have made my whole life.

Why are gates important to people and you? Kayan, 10 Gates became very important for me because it is something that is very much present within my locality. I see it every day and everywhere. It’s almost as though we are built to constantly walk through gates. It is so irresistible and I want my work to always reflect the everyday.

How long does it take to make a gate from the drawing to the making? Malachi, 10 Good to have your question finally. It’s always hard for me to track the times/duration in the making of the work because we usually work on bodies of work simultaneously. Sometimes I could be working on ten pieces at a time, sometimes even more. It took me almost a year to produce the works I’m currently showing in my Trilogy exhibition in Ghana. Based on experience, I can say it will take me may be two weeks to make a single work. From drawing, to planning, to fabricating and finishing.

Are you a full-time artist or do you have a side job? If you do, what is that job? (You don’t have to say it) Maya, 11 Of course, I will say it. Yes, I am a full-time artist. I don’t have any other side business. It will be difficult for me to manage myself if I am to do any other thing. My work is so intense, I sometimes feel like 24 hours isn’t enough for me. One thing I usually want my students to understand is, an artist is a major profession just like being a doctor, or a lawyer. It requires one to practice it full time. I say students because I use to be a graduate assistant when I was in grad school.

Also, I’m the kind of person who puts all their eggs in one basket.

This challenges me to handle it with care and a kind of seriousness that wouldn’t break them. I can’t be careless with such an important basket because I don’t want to lose all the eggs.

What is your favourite thing about art? Jayda, 12 If there is anything about art that I love, it is definitely the freedom it gives me to think and express myself through creation. And, the fact that it allows me the space and time (luxury) to deal with materials. Art also permits you to go deeper into things, you always want to understand why something is what it is and what it could become. Hence you delve deep into research and you end up understanding just more than that material or form, you gain more knowledge by following an idea. A banker wouldn’t care about why some currency is the colour it is; they just want to deal with the currency. An artist wants to understand why the colour, why the size and why the name.

An artist would even want to know the processes in printing, the materials used in the production and how harmful it would be to the user. It is that inquisitiveness that excites me.

Is it inspiring?

It is extremely inspiring. I love doing it. It is the only work that brought me into contact with you all amazing friends who inspire me so much. I will choose this work over and over again.

B E R M O N D S E Y

K U M A S I

Welcome to Kumasi The city that emerged under the KUM tree A lot, find Home here The Garden city with the Cold Air The street has exuberant colours, interesting forms and ornaments, oh and you can find Gold here.

Layered histories, cultures, styles and ideas, this city doesn’t conform.

It synthesises everything, a hybridised city, is where I come from.

You are welcome to Kumasi, the city that flaunts with Gold, That grows beautifully the seeds of aesthetics that we sow.

Al Hassan Issah

Welcome to Bermondsey It’s home for many Can be loud and crazy Outsider view of this area can be hazy But the community brings out its beauty By providing uniqueness and diversity The Saturday stalls each week are exciting The entrance is welcoming Colourful buildings and artworks that reminds me of Shoreditch Come through the gate, you’ll realise how much history it upholds!

Sheniz Elmaz-Golding

Alaska Stars, 2023 Acrylic paint, vegetable oils, wood charcoal on linen 75 x 75cm

Strips of Flowers, 2023 Wallpaper, scuba fabric, linen 75 x 75cm

Al Hassan Issah During the workshops, I also moved around my vicinity in Kumasi. I was inspired by the symbols and drawings on gates that I had seen in the area. Similar to how the young people in Bermondsey were making art from the things they observed in their surroundings, I also aimed to create works inspired by my immediate environment. The collage called Strip of Flowers was inspired by Aya’s work, using wallpapers and scuba fabric flowers sourced from my studio. It was also a response to one of the tasks which was to create a work using materials from one’s home.

Additionally, Mapping out the Maps is an experimentation of mapping as a drawing form, just like participants did in the workshop. I first drew out the textures created from painting on linen, then projected the maps made by the young people during their Bermondsey drawing journey, tracing them with different paints onto the work.

Mapping out the Maps, 2023 Acrylic paint, vegetable oils, linen 75 x 75cm

Al Hassan Issah, a Kumasi-ano Issah is a multidisciplinary artist from Kumasi, Ghana. He explores and challenges ideas of objecthood, tradition, and place through critical study and explorations of what constitutes contemporary painting, drawing, and sculpture. His extensive education at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology facilitates in that endeavour.

Finding an angle that corresponded with Issah about colonialism and the diasporic experience in the West, I grew inquisitive to learn what driving force triggered Issah to adopt his present working and thinking methods.

Discussions and communication throughout the project had revealed the potent lifeblood of his continuing interest. The aphorism established by his tutors—”go to town”—becomes an almost instinctive mechanism for Issah to find newly harvested outlets for inspiration and the foundation for his work. What is a town, though, and why is it paramount? What distinguishes Kumasi from our preconceived notions of town here in London? What defines his town? What is there within? What keeps Kumasi breathing and moving?

Kumasi bears the answer. Issah informs his audience that he tries to create the noise and influence that Kumasi breeds within its parameters as “Kumasi is a city that highly exaggerates things” and as a result he is a Kumasi-ano (one who wears Kumasi on his head).

How can we indicate the omnipotent authority recognised in Issah’s work, or, to put it in a different context, what differs the inspirations observed in Kumasi from those found in other towns? These solutions can be found in the phenomenology and lived entities that make up the established shared knowledges of the people, including clothing and fabrics, traditional colours, and patterns on Kente cloths, Trans-Atlantic slave trade-imported architecture and customs, and even ordinary behaviours involving stirring and cooking.

Considering if the material brings him to the town or whether the town actually leads him to the materials might help establish the coherence of this physical investigation to his praxis. The artist is recognised and acknowledged for his investigations into the politics of materiality. He repositions his urban-inspired constellations into a futile gallery space

whilst amalgamating water-based paints and vegetable oil to mimic natural processions and the evolution of architecture within the city. Issah has an incredible ability for turning the commonplace into what he perceives as drawing. The aforementioned concepts coalesce to yield an assortment of conglomerated fabrication that combines the artistic energies of sculpture and painting (an artist Albert Paley self-described method of performing the identical objective).

As he physically realises through his theatrical processes, it is evident that the contexts addressed in Issah’s work become interrelated and co-dependent, layering over one another to substantiate vast legacies and knowledge. The aim in my critical essay was to identify and explore the glue that holds the stratum of inspiration, and its many manifestations, together – through cityscape, family, memory, politics, materials, histories.

In Al Hassan Issah’s work, culture, the ultimate combining force, is inadvertently addressed.

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.” - Alan Watts

Simrandeep Chana Read the essay How is the Concept of Culture Addressed within Al Hassan Issah’s Practice? at www.academia.edu/101613409/

Special thanks to Al Hassan Issah The Blue Youth participants: Alice, Aya, Dariush, Faith, Heidi, India, Isioma, Jayda, Kyan, Malachi, Maya, Richard,Yeesarah Jackie Bygrave, The Blue Youth Manager Kadie Edmonds, The Blue Youth,Youth Worker Sheniz Elmaz- Golding and Simrandeep Chana, BA Drawing Project Curators and Facilitators Renee Odjidja, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Camberwell College of Arts, UAL Misty Ingham, Projects and Partnerships Curator, Drawing Room Zine design Alicja Orzechowska, BA Illustration Simrandeep Chana, BA Drawing Misty Ingham and Renee Odjidja Artworks and Text Al Hassan Issah The Blue Youth participants Misty Ingham and Renee Odjidja Sheniz Elmaz- Golding Simrandeep Chana Photography Project Team Esme Wedderburn This partnership was conceived by Kelly Chorpening, Professor and Chair of Art, University of Nevada Reno, USA (formerly Programme Director Fine Art, Camberwell College of Arts, UAL)