Appau Junior Boakye Yiadom: Misguided Warrior 4th – 26th June 2010

A new exhibition is on it’s way to Dalston, fresh from the nomadic gallery group that is Squid & Tabernacle. The itinerant gallery project stages short-term exhibitions in varying media and venues throughout the year and is currently loacted in a shipping container at Hartwell Street in Dalston.

Boakye-Yiadom creates staged environments using everyday objects as characters which are activated during a brief performance. An ongoing, reflexive relationship is developed between the archive of films and photographs which result from each enactment and the objects themselves. Employing this practice of cyclical re-enactment Misguided Warrior draws upon traditions of ritual and ceremony.

The ceremonial act can appear absurd; strange dances and marches performed in idiosyncratic reference to deeply rooted cultural and historical events. However, the use of the drum beat, a recurring feature of the otherwise diverse and disparate forms of ritual practiced worldwide, is for Boakye-Yiadom a point of access to the underlying forms which define these traditions.

‘Misguided Warrior’

With the band centered at the northernmost edge of the lawn and facing south. The old guard marches to the west side of the east lawn and faces the east block, while the new guard marches to the east side of the lawn and faces west towards the old guard. After the old and new guards are formed from three ranks into two, and independently dressed off for proper alignment the two sergeants of the guard – commanders of the two divisions of new guard – advance to be inspected by the company sergeant-major. Following inspection, the number two division sergeant marches to his position while the number one division sergeant stands still. The new guard is then given the order “Get on parade”.

After most of the patients have entered the compound and taken their seats, the drummers and singers start to play again as the okomfo, dressed in a white robe, moves across the compound and sits down on a metal-studded wooden chair, facing the musicians. The musicians begin playing more vigorously, and, after a short time, the okomfo kicks off his sandals, signifying the obosom has entered into him. Once the okomfo is possessed, one or two shrine officials stand and escort him into a small building to change into a different costume, depending on which obosom has possessed him. After the okomfo is inside the building, the drums and rattles are silenced, and the women sing a short call and response song.

www.squidandtabernacle.com

Appau Boakye-Yiadom graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2008. His work has been the subject of solo exhibition Backwash at Primo Alonso, London and was included in Like Love curated by Sonia Boyce at the Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, Everyday Altered and A Broken Fall at Josh Lilley Gallery, London.