Larry Achiampong uses imagery, aural and visual archives and live performance to explore ideas around class, cross-cultural and post-digital identity. By examining the construct of ‘self’ through archival materials and pop-culture using a post-colonial position, he reveals the entrenched socio-political contradictions in contemporary society. Achiampong’s work often takes place in the public realm, with public art and screenings integral to his practice. Whilst being inspired by Afrofuturism, Achiampong refers to his work using his own terminology of ‘sanko-time’. “Sankofa” is a Ghanian Twi word, meaning to go back and retrieve, or that something is known but needs to be revisited to make sense of the present or pave the way for the future. With this outlook, when encountering his work, the viewer is prompted to consider the threads of continuity between the past, present and future in a different way to western-capitalist classifiers of time.
Sunday’s Best (2016) is a video that was acquired for the Museum of London. It considers how belief systems within the diaspora are influenced by colonial histories in the present day. The work begins with fast-paced visuals showing us a mix of historical and contemporary images which last just long enough to illustrate some of the events and references of the Black diaspora. Our narrator is introduced with organ swells, as the images are replaced with static shots of the inside of Christian Churches documented across several sites in London, at odds with the narrators' descriptions. The final image is of a woman, in a traditional West African outfit, with closed eyes, and tears streaming down her cheeks singing, which interrupts the narration.
Sunday’s Best is a significant addition to the Museum of London’s contemporary art collection. In particular, it extends the museum’s collection of artists’ film and video, which includes work by Laurence Lek and Jeremy Deller (b.1966), amongst others. Moreover, it complements holdings of work by artists and photographers exploring themes of black British history and identity, such as Charlie Phillips and Liz Johnson Artur (b. 1964).Untold, contested and alternative histories, and their intersectionality, remain priority areas for collecting as the museum develops content and collections for the new Museum of London at West Smithfield.
