Gideon Appah: The Play of Thought

Gideon Appah

The Play of Thought

Gideon Appah

The Play of Thought

Poems by Esme Allman

Introduction, p. 11

The Play of Thought, p. 13

List of Works, p. 147

Biography, p. 151

My encounter with Gideon Appah’s The Play of Thought challenged the way I lend poetry and language to visual art, paintings, and portraiture. I immersed myself in the latest articulations of Appah’s world a decisive mixture of beach landscapes, intimate gazes, close attention to and admiration of the male form, all filtered through clouds of cigarette smoke and came out with a set of winding poems, homing in on the images that struck me, resonating as sound does, originating in the chest and spreading about my body. The poems breathe further life into the paintings presented, weaving mundane narratives around extraordinary and otherworldly scenes in which vibrant interactions between hands, faces, flames, bushes, water, and light are realized. The poems attempt to further define the space between these objects, body parts, and the elements, texturing the way gravity, current, and weight operate in the paintings. Like most play, sometimes the rules are abundantly clear the boundaries of the game sharp. Sometimes play is just that, an expansive meander further and deeper, for the sake of enjoyment, pleasure, or just because.

The Play of Thought was fertile ground to write. It was a joy and a privilege to sit with such an intricate series. To offer language and voice to paintings that already offer themselves as a point of departure for audiences to build their own ideas. To consider my thoughts and responses to the work in a form as dear to me as poetry.

Thank you to Gideon for this stunning collection and to the staff at Pace Gallery, particularly Alycia Gaunt and Esme Charteris, for the opportunity to sit with and interpret such special work and for welcoming me to your London base with such warmth. Thank you, Madeline Gilmore, for offering such important edits from Pace’s New York office. And many thanks to Elijah Kellman for your generous eyes on these poems as they came together.

Esme Allman

London, March 2024

The Sensitivity of Everyday Things Pale Image, 2024 oil on canvas, 80 × 60 cm (31 1⁄ 2 × 23 5 ⁄ 8")

Come. Sit here. Watch clouds plume from my cigarette a white redaction against the horizon decorating the empty beach my languid body nowhere aside the sand though my hand stiff the skin on my middle and forefinger ridges undulating stained yellow from chain smoking.

Flint. Flick. Flame. Plume.

There, the remnants of an angry fire having ripped through the landscape weeks prior echo with the lapping waves. Ashen upturned boat covered in seaweed, its charred carcass glossed by the wet gentle sea. A naked tree mistaken for being bare by virtue of England’s unrelenting winter: Just the evidence of pale fire.

Flint. Flick. Flame. Plume.

He sits up to mouth the word concentric its syllables pulling and tugging heave out his throat. The water scales itself in wild rotation the current mimicking the man’s pulsing jugular vein. He smokes a cigarette: the water subdues.

Flint. Flick. Flame. Plume.

The Sensitivity of Everyday Things

Blue Angry Bush, 2023 oil on canvas, 80 × 60 cm (31 1⁄ 2 × 23 5 ⁄ 8")

Now, now, You, Bush, are a blue flare. A shadow mounts at your feet.

Your leaves shake in a cool wind that whips the sand. You narrow your eyes

at the sky. Heed, Bush. You know what they say about comparison bringing home blue resentment

like a cold slap on your cheek. The blue moon motions, its nightly glare crooning

orbed light at your cheeks. Broad light. Stark light. Make eyes with me. My burnt breath pierces the beach,

coaxing you. You engulf yourself further. I’m still watching, love. Plush smoke from your persistent flame.

The Sensitivity of Everyday Things That Which Recreates Itself, 2023 oil on canvas, 200 × 280 cm (78 3 ⁄4 × 110 1⁄4")

Marie his sigh carries the crackle of the phoneline, my name a two-syllable vicarity. It’s Thursday. He whispers into a payphone,

twiddling the cord between his fingers, cupped hand shielding his longing. I shift the baby to the other side of my lap. He came back

the air taut between us. He starts with the stranger’s cufflinks, his shirt skirting his dainty wrist, white cotton poking from his black suit jacket.

Yellow palm and brown knuckles a sculpted plinth on the table. London’s bright morning scratching on the window. The gas hob gives

a quick blow in the kitchen, then hums under a steel pot. Gas hiss, flint flick, flame under the French press. Two abandoned cigarettes smoke

in the ashtray placed at tapping distance. He tells me the stranger faces the winter trees struck of their vibrant green. He winds the phone cord around his finger,

grazes the wire on his teeth. Go talk to him baby coos then blinks herself into a milk imbued sleep. I wouldn’t know what to do with my hands

he retorts. Imagine you’re fire or smoke! Cheap cutlery clangs. The air around our conversation loosens. He exhales. The phone clicks. I’m left to my Thursday.

The Sensitivity of Everyday Things Relatable Species, 2023 oil on canvas, 200 × 280 cm (78 3 ⁄4 × 110 1⁄4")

Bold note. I come in person to the diner knowing my friend is not working. Baby is with her dad. It’s Tuesday.

I wait for the description of the cufflinks to seat himself at the table across from me. It’s wishful thinking.

Late morning foot traffic slows, the suits dotting themselves in the diner, wall-facing. Spring tempts fools silly enough to believe

that March arrives without stipulation. I nurse a decaf coffee. Nothing to exacerbate the jitters. Risky business tasking my hands

with enough to do. One of the suits shoots a cautious look to the bell resonating above the door I almost don’t hear it as it opens, and Cufflinks

walks in, his wrist naked strong at the joint, an unlit cigarette in hand. He strides across the threshold, and I keep him

in my periphery. Immediately I see the appeal. I offer him a light. He holds my gaze the entire length of his cigarette.

II.

Nudes on the Coast, 2024 oil and acrylic on canvas, 120 × 100 cm (47 1⁄4 × 39 3 ⁄ 8")

In a story of wild abandon, I become a blue flame bush, stretch my limbs into the petal shaped fire and let it assume the outline of my humanoid form. I left my family baby with her dad, their black cherub faces radiating a type of mourning I reassured myself they’ll recover from as the door clicked and I walked out my life.

The grass underfoot was too soft not to walk on. The stranger, still strange but belonging to me now, has forsaken his cufflinks; his suit. He’s nude, limbs sprawled on a towel. I trail my toe where grass delineates the land and beach. A hot peach swells to the size of a balloon in the high sun. I stroke a bit of coral to my face, and the sea crawls toward me on its belly, its foam coating the sand.

If the moss cloaks the rocks as cushions for our seats. Maybe, if the mermaids poke out the water, tempted by our lingering chatter. Maybe If I bare my shoulder and let that

be that. I probably won’t be here again, but whilst I am here, we listen to the crackle in our lungs, our gun-holster laughter.

Acrobats and Red Ball, 2024 oil and acrylic on canvas, 120 × 100 cm (47 1⁄4 × 39 3 ⁄ 8")

Elastic snap of a man’s boxer briefs on hot flesh. Mountains gate crashing

on the horizon, a red tomato juicing to rot on clay earth. The sea sounds like the patter

of footsteps on wet concrete. A busy beach. No privacy. He drives

a finger in the ground, bruising where muscle and cartilage join.

Thank God he utters and slides the same slim finger in the parting of his afro. Thank God for my black

shadow, the way the daytime is more daytime when I’m around.

White Mountain, 2023 oil on canvas, 200 × 150 cm (78 3 ⁄4 × 59")

Poised in a muted limestone cove, the orange sun-moon although definitely the moon regulated the tides.

Steady winds licked their goose-pimpled skin. Waves crashed in the red night.

They speared their surfboard in the wet sand. Grazed on pellets of red light;

apricots, tomatoes, simple fruit-like balls of fire. The woman raised an arm, her other gripped a handle on her hip.

Head thrown back breasts a kind of ecstasy, though those too were plastered under her armpits.

The group settled between two cliffs and called it Vantage Point.

They mused on their insignificance against the night’s red whisper; its limestone; the cove.

The surfboard retorted. They shushed it. Instead watched the elements meet in their nursery playground:

White Earth.

White Light. White Fire. The heavy, humid Air.

III.

Golden, 2024 oil on canvas, 80 × 60 cm (31 1⁄ 2 × 23 5 ⁄ 8")

Confronted by the unfair nature of people, I stopped being radiant. This meant a careful practice of cane-rowing silks and mesh yarn into my hair. Called them ornaments. My eyes took on the quality of gnashing teeth beneath my narrowed lids: my stubborn understanding. Friends didn’t want to see me like that.

I wrapped myself in a diligent hug felt the boundaries of my body curl poked at my skin. The hair follicles snapped shut. I wasn’t even letting water in. My act of gross punishment heaved any light source left into the cloudless sky. Made myself miserable doing the whole wretched process.

Portrait of an Optimistic Man, 2024 oil on canvas, 100 × 80 cm (39 3 ⁄ 8 × 31 1⁄ 2")

Confronted by the overstaying manner of London’s Winter, I took an oath to wear yellow every single day of Spring. On my walk to work the children on their way to school called me Dandelion in the tone they’d croon their dolls with. I had a careful practice of ripping my afro pick through my hair, its scrit scrit scrit a foot peddling dry carpet.

I took compliments from strangers. Even gathered a few phone numbers. This blessing of a woman, Marie, who was more honest with me than my friends had ever been, slipped a napkin smudged with her digits in my pocket. Didn’t apologize that the pen ink had rubbed, staining my yellow trousers. You’re lucky to have my number. And shifted the baby in her arms onto her right side. The rest of my day orbited around her gap tooth smile.

IV.

Starlite, 2023 oil on canvas, 80 × 60 cm (31 1⁄ 2 × 23 5 ⁄ 8")

I did a handstand and immediately panicked. I didn’t know how to do a handstand. Morning was peaking behind pink curtains, sleep finishing off its dregs. And there I was still cloaked in darkness feet puncturing the night. Thought I could feel the cold air sketching out my edges seeping between my toes. The horse had my father’s voice who kept saying Go on, hold your core. Keep it going. And called me Too quick like he wasn’t scuffing his hoofs against the ground and waving his strong horse spine with such yogic melody the bone and muscle and generic horse matter melded into one. I gripped him with my handstand hands dug my nails in so he’d listen when I pleaded Stop! Just stop! He rippled his spine clubbed his four feet on the floor maintained I hold my core and that balance was like a strike of luck and if my legs entered some sleepy paralysis that could only be a good thing.

The Guitarist, 2024 oil on canvas, 80 × 60 cm (31 1⁄ 2 × 23 5 ⁄ 8")

Botched love song you receive sweet despite my haphazard thumbing on guitar strings.

In spite of my hazardous thumbs, I strum your clavicles and hum my love note into your ear.

I hum my love note, a low sound in your ear hiding, in a gentle bevel, my knee behind my knee.

My knee behind my other knee; there are careful ways to tell you of my want.

I halt my careful tune and tell you of my want: the night makes a ghost out of me

and I don’t mind. You make a ghost of my guitar, placing your palm on my belly to feel its expansion.

The sky and the stars expand into vast night and the guitar starts to play independent of me.

Independent of me my want gnaws some botched love song I pray you receive sweet.

The Balcony Red Picture, 2023 oil on canvas, 2 panels, 120 × 300 cm (47 1⁄4 × 118 1⁄ 8") each

In a brash moment, where the totality of living as both bereaved and aroused in the same flush breath becomes caught as a lump in your throat, you rush off your feet to the balcony overlooking the Atlantic.

You do not touch the bannisters. The curious intrusion to feel your body impact the ground below would quickly become your end. Better to stand back. Endure

the maroon sky of twilight, hoping night arrives as deep black, matte black, total black, so you can hide.

Your body fractures, your old ghost rocking your perimeter. You thank your tailor who fitted your suit to grow with your limbs, the contraction and expansion in your stomach

pinched by your belt buckle. In the event of ghosts the suit also has give. You cradle your knuckles in your palm and wait out the menacing sky.

The wooden slats underfoot jar, each slotted with dribbles of light in mind. The lump in your throat

swells. You hum your distant love note to banish the sensation. To move it through you.

You enter a caved reckoning, two hands on either shoulder, shaking down your residual resistance. A twinge in your scapula tells you you want a cigarette.

The Surfer, 2023 oil on canvas, 2 panels, 120 × 300 cm (47 1⁄4 × 118 1⁄ 8") each

Stand over there. At the water’s lip.

Feet hip-width apart.

Relax your knees like inching your way into a shallow whirlpool.

Don’t mind the bleed. It’s what happens when everything comes together. Let your arms fall at your sides.

Tense your core

your biceps, your triceps. All your human matter is now ascribed to sexiness, sexy like the top edge

of a garden fence or humid air on a packed train. Pierce the board in the sand. Remember, to look onward no, outward. Yes,

like that. Like I’m stood on a far stretch of sand, like you can’t reach me, like grief flurrying from the gap in your thighs.

VI.

The Sensitivity of Everyday Things The Play of Thought, 2024 oil on canvas, 120 × 300 cm (47 1⁄4 × 118 1⁄ 8")

The afterworld turned up as an echo of a fire in the desert that blazed across the sand dunes two days prior. The succulents, the cacti, and all other tough-leaf plants revelled in the abandoned afternoon, sun pouring down on the already charred landscape. I put my hands through my hair, and sweat pooled on what was left of my linens. I felt the blink of an oasis nearby and considered my dumb luck. The sand dunes sniggered; their concentric rippling ebbed and flowed like clouded bath water. I kept myself busy: collected stray cufflinks with a metal detector. My skin even flashed, browned shoulders flirting with my midriff. Midday sun lurched, and I dreamed of swimming where there was no spectacle of fire, where my feet could kick, a frog in a bulb of honey. Swimming so breath recovered itself as it ran out. In the afterworld cigarette smoke was a shared nuisance. There was no water but no end to the cigarettes we might light. No diner, no suits, the simple organization of the world split across grief and wanting (so much wanting).

VII.

Faces, Cigarettes, and Portrait of a Man, 2024 charcoal on paper, 2 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

That night sits in my head as limbs resting; an amalgamation of lines and corners, parallel and perpendicular, on an old sturdy chair. We fought about your glass, its inky contents almost soiling my messy papers piled center on the coffee table, that too a monstrous bit of glass perfectly circular, anchored by an oak trunk, vanished smooth, all our furniture domesticated, so it could sit in the living room among other needlessly expensive things.

On my way to upturning the contents of your ashtray into the bin my stern glance distorted in all the glass in the room the coffee table, your wine, the sliding garden doors my face bread dough, stretchy and boyish, my nostrils bloated like my father’s or some past man across a bar. I thought maybe you could love me as a dragon fruit dove off the edge of the kitchen countertop bruising my foot where the poky bit of bone protrudes. Never mind. I walk over to the table and palm the taut skin at your chest, move your hat with the other and balance it on my head.

Smoky Hand and Portrait, 2023 charcoal on paper, 2 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

I pinch my throat with my fingers. Your Adam’s apple prepares itself to escape your pursed lips. I expect you black-haired, managerial. A red kindness tinges your coils and therefore, your sun-aged skin, the narrow of your eyes more comical than menacing. I trace your cheekbone with my spare hand stuffed in my jacket pocket, fingering the lining as if the integrity of your jawbone stops and starts on my upper thigh.

Sometimes my disobedient hand singes careless burn holes in my suit: there are buttons where buttons really shouldn’t be.

Portrait of a Gentleman and Imaginary Tree, 2023 charcoal on paper, 2 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

I am pricked: a thorn burrows itself in the top layer of skin on my tough thumb. Itsworsethanitlooks I squint-shrug at the florist. My work suit moves a second after I stop fidgeting as mocking evidence. She cocks her head. These aren’t quite roses she explains. My eyes hover in the space above her head. Her speech peters out. She gestures to a Spring bouquet. For your wife? I gather the branch in tissue paper emphasising its monochrome. Pay her with three scrambled notes left on her countertop and dart out onto the pavement before further small talk ensued. The evening is a cold flush. On the bus home, a thick of thorned tree trunks convene behind park railings, their frozen contortions calling to the wrapped stem laid across the seat next to me. I train an eye on my reflection, the bus picking up speed.

Still Life and Portrait of a Woman, 2024 charcoal on paper, 3 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

Hands and heads detach themselves mid-way through bone. Gravity works differently here, the low-slung air crawling toward the ground. The gap between her eyes widens, black hair hazy with refracted light. Some mirage, a pulsing aura,

forms around her, cleaning her chest of any detail. She reaches out and touches the smooth slice of his wrist, dripping water.

She cups his contents in her palms and brings it to her lips mouthing thank god as an imagined body might, mounted on two grateful dirtied knees. His four fingers point in the direction of where the air once was, measure the width of his forearm and number the seconds before the nerves in his severed hand runs out of steam. The trees shed heavy rocks rather than crisped leaves, the earth tightening around their roots. She wants to be that frugal one day: pinch water and sunlight to deploy them as and when she needs.

Still Objects and a Hand, 2023–24 charcoal on paper, 3 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

smoking out the front leaning on the rain soaked railing waiting on the sound man this is one of dad’s stories told via his brother’s via an old friend via Aunt Ena who married into the family and who was probably also there that night the erupting conclusion of some neighbour’s nine night too young and too unassuming to die like how he did the most important thing was wiring the HiFi system so it sounded unblemished rich sound pouring out into the basement Clarks held feet treading molasses thick air an alter stood rickety in the corner would jug with the bass next to an assortment of rice and peas; jollof; plain basmati

the alter honored his life as donated objects loving interpretations of a horticulture hobby three silver chains a ball of fire.

Still Features, 2023–24

charcoal on paper, 3 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

as hailing a taxi two-fingered point upward thumb suspended taking shape around the air a speechless command materialising the lunch bill as propelled to the ceiling mid-dance as saluting an acquaintance on the other side of the road as acknowledgement to commuters on the opposite train as a calling to calling over calling to come calling here come

As she was dying, I had a conversation with her brother mostly about how thin she’d gotten. We stood beyond her hospital curtain and exchanged hushed words. He kept describing her as barren her limbs, loose muscle drooping over the bone, her skin a feeble brown, her whole body colored the palm of a hand. She murmured behind the curtain, a sleepy panic, her consciousness wading through the morphine. His shoulders slumped in his suit. A fleeting thought flickered in my mind; how was he garnering desire while on the brink of such grief? I told him he was misusing “barren”— she’d never wanted kids.

Talking Heads, 2024 charcoal on paper, 3 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

It’s only fitting we listen to a vinyl. Morning spills out from the night. We don’t talk about the business with Marie it was intimate and that’s all there is to say on the matter.

My throat throbs from back-to-back cigarettes. He toys with my unlit ones, a majorette, his dexterous spinning and landing impressive. He adjusts his cuffs, his palmar creases

venturing deep across his open hand. I plod my chin in the place his thumb webs the rest of his fingers. Gaze up at him. The conversation floats upward

with the rest of the day. We wake in the afternoon, bodies crumpled at the foot of the sofa.

15. The Sensitivity of Everyday Things Pale Image

oil on canvas

80 × 60 cm (31 1⁄ 2 × 23 5 ⁄ 8")

25. The Sensitivity of Everyday Things Blue Angry Bush

oil on canvas 80 × 60 cm (31 1⁄ 2 × 23 5 ⁄ 8")

29. The Sensitivity of Everyday Things That Which Recreates Itself 2023 oil on canvas

200 × 280 cm (78 3 ⁄4 × 110 1⁄4")

33. The Sensitivity of Everyday Things Relatable Species 2023 oil on canvas 200 × 280 cm (78 3 ⁄4 × 110 1⁄4")

41. Nudes on the Coast

oil and acrylic on canvas 120 × 100 cm (47 1⁄4 × 39 3 ⁄ 8")

45. Will You Ever be Here Again? 2023

oil and acrylic on canvas

240 × 220 cm (94 1⁄ 2 × 86 5 ⁄ 8")

49. Acrobats and Red Ball 2024

oil and acrylic on canvas

120 × 100 cm (47 1⁄4 × 39 3 ⁄ 8")

55. White Mountain 2023

oil on canvas

200 × 150 cm (78 3 ⁄4 × 59")

63. Golden 2024

oil on canvas

80 × 60 cm (31 1⁄ 2 × 23 5 ⁄ 8")

69. Portrait of an Optimistic Man 2024

oil on canvas

100 × 80 cm (39 3 ⁄ 8 × 31 1⁄ 2")

77. Starlite 2023

oil on canvas

80 × 60 cm (31 1⁄ 2 × 23 5 ⁄ 8")

81. The Guitarist

2024

oil on canvas

80 × 60 cm (31 1⁄ 2 × 23 5 ⁄ 8")

89. The Balcony Red Picture

2023

oil on canvas

2 panels, 120 × 300 cm (47 1⁄4 × 118 1⁄ 8") each

95. The Surfer 2023

oil on canvas

2 panels, 120 × 300 cm (47 1⁄4 × 118 1⁄ 8") each

103. The Sensitivity of Everyday Things The Play of Thought

2024

oil on canvas

120 × 300 cm (47 1⁄4 × 118 1⁄ 8")

111. Faces, Cigarettes, and Portrait of a Man

2024

charcoal on paper

2 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

115. Smoky Hand and Portrait

2023

charcoal on paper

2 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

121. Portrait of a Gentleman and Imaginary Tree

2023

charcoal on paper

2 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

125. Still Life and Portrait of a Woman

2024

charcoal on paper

3 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

129. Still Objects and a Hand

2023–24

charcoal on paper

3 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

135. Still Features

2023–24

charcoal on paper

3 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

141. Talking Heads

2024

charcoal on paper

3 sheets, 59.4 × 42 cm (23 3 ⁄ 8 × 16 1⁄ 2") each

Born in Accra, Ghana, in 1987, Gideon Appah received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, in 2012. After graduating with a BFA in Painting, Appah held his first exhibition in Ghana, including his first solo exhibition at the Goethe Institute in Accra in 2013. Other important exhibitions of his work include Gideon Appah: Forgotten, Nudes, Landscapes, Institute for Contemporary Art at University of Commonwealth Virginia, Richmond (2022); Blue Boys Blues, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York (2020); Orderly Disorderly, Ghana Science Museum, Accra (2017); Clay Objects (Past and Present Aesthetics), Nubuke Foundation, Accra (2013); and End of Year Exhibition, K.N.U.S.T Museum, Kumasi, Ghana (2012). In 2015, he was chosen as one of the top ten finalists for the Kuenyehia Art Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Arts. That same year he became the first international artist to win the 1st Merit Prize Award at the Barclays L’Atelier Art Competition, which was held in Johannesburg. This awarded him a three-month artist residency at the Bag Factory Studios (2016) and a solo show at the Absa Gallery (2017), both in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Public Collections:

Absa Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa

Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea

Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway

Musée d’Art Contemporain Africain Al Maaden, Marrakesh, Morocco

Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada

Published on the occasion of:

Gideon Appah

The Play of Thought

March 21–April 27, 2024

Pace Gallery

267 Itaewon-ro

Yongsan-gu

Seoul

Publication © 2024 Pace Publishing

Artworks by Gideon Appah © Gideon Appah

Text by Esme Allman © 2024 Esme Allman

Front and back cover: Will You Ever be Here Again?, 2023 (detail) pp. 4–9, 21–22, 66–67, 118–119: Gideon Appah’s studio in London. pp. 36–37, 52–53, 58–59, 72–73, 92–93, 98–99, 106–107, 132–133, 144–145: Installation views, The Play of Thought, Pace Gallery, London, 2024. pp. 83–84: Gideon Appah in his studio in London.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Every reasonable effort has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.

Photography: Damian Griffiths (pp. covers, 3–9, 12, 14, 22–23, 25, 28–29, 32–33, 38, 41, 44–45, 49, 55, 60, 63, 66–67, 69, 74, 77, 81, 84–86, 88–89, 94–95, 100, 102–103, 118–119), Sangtae Kim (pp. 36–37, 52–53, 58–59, 72–73, 92–93, 98–99, 106–107, 132–133, 144–145), Studio Flint (pp. 108, 110–111, 114–115, 120–121, 124–125, 128–129, 134–135, 140–141)

Production: Henrik Nygren Design

Editorial Director: Gillian Canavan

Editorial Manager: Madeline Gilmore

Rights & Reproductions: Vincent Wilcke

Typeset in Monotype Grotesque

ISBN : 978-1-948701-74-7