Culture and social inequality are closely related. If art is made predominantly by and for an exclusive audience, what role do institutions play in solidifying social inequality?
Writer Mike Pinnington and artist Larry Achiampong discuss the varying levels of access people have to places of culture through the social context of Achiampong’s practice as determined by background and privilege.
How can institutions actively diversify representation to create a culture that is open and inclusive to all?
Mike Pinnington is a writer, editor and consultant based in Liverpool. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of visual arts and cultural commentary publication, The Double Negative. His writing has appeared in The Art Newspaper, Art Monthly, Art Quarterly, ArtReview, Ocula and byNWR, amongst others. He is fascinated by popular culture, class and access to the arts.
Larry Achiampong is a multi-disciplinary artist whose solo and collaborative projects employ imagery, aural and visual archives, live performance and sound to explore ideas surrounding class, cross-cultural and post-digital identity.
Achiampong has exhibited, performed and presented projects within the UK and abroad including Tate Britain/Modern, London; The Institute For Creative Arts, Cape Town; The British Film Institute, London; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation, Accra; Logan Center Exhibitions, Chicago; Prospect New Orleans, New Orleans; Diaspora Pavilion – 57th Venice Biennale, Venice; and Somerset House, London.
Achiampong (b. 1984, UK) is a Jarman Award nominated artist (2018). He completed a BA in Mixed Media Fine Art at University of Westminster in 2005 and an MA in Sculpture at The Slade School of Fine Art in 2008. He lives and works in Essex, and has been a tutor on the Photography MA programme at Royal College of Art since 2016. Achiampong currently serves on the Board of Trustees at Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) and is represented by C Ø P P E R F I E L D.
This discussion is in partnership with OCULA, and will feature as part of the OCULA Conversation series.
Open Rooms is Open Eye Gallery’s online programme. It involves free live-streamed talks and workshops, plus ongoing public discussions on our Discord community. It takes place in rooms all across the world — artists’ rooms, chat rooms and in your living room. Open Rooms is livestreamed to our Twitch channel, an online streaming service.
We’ll post all the Open Rooms events on our events page, so check back there for updates. We also have a community of chat rooms and ongoing conversations on Discord, a free messaging app open to all. To join, follow this link and download Discord on desktop or mobile. https://discord.gg/CqqC55h
Image: ‘Relic 3’ (2019), Single-Channel 4K Video With Stereo Sound. Courtesy of The Artist & Copperfield London. Made Possible With Funding From Arts Council England.
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