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Ed Cross is delighted to present A Sum of Days, a solo exhibition by British-Guyanese artist Ann Gollifer at 19 Garrett Street, EC1Y 0TY from 17 May – 10 June 2023.
A Sum of Days comprises 23 watercolour paintings produced in 2022, as lockdowns lifted around the world and relationships to domestic and public spaces were being widely reappraised. Made on leaves of vintage watercolour paper that were originally bound together in book form, the pages offered Gollifer an ideal ground for exploring her environment and its unique materiality - specifically, Botswana ochres and the relationships between their colour ranges and textures.
Working from her garden on the outskirts of Gaborone, where the wild meets the cultivated, Gollifer mixes her pigments herself, grinding and processing them into watercolour paint. Her collection of Botswana ochres is facilitated by Mma Motsie Nkwemabala, a traditional mural painter and healer who has taken Gollifer to her collection sites where she makes ochre cakes for her own use. Gollifer also buys Letsoku - a finely ground ochre in a wide range of colours from cream to yellow, orange, red, rich brown, pinks and purple, traditionally used as face powders to smooth, varnish and beautify skin - from traders in ochre cosmetics.
The complex entanglements of history, place, identity and belonging are at the heart of Gollifer’s work, which draws on her South American, British and African heritage, and their shared histories of conquest and colonialism; in A Sum of Days, concentric lines of graphite layered on top of the ochre pigments - like contours of a map - signify a spatial location for the images in her works, while also referencing fingerprints and personal identities.
In the artist's words, "The use of Botswana earth helps to embed me in the landscapes I create in paint, and gives me a sense of belonging in a place in which I have been self transplanted. The Frangipani is indigenous to South America not Africa but we have both flourished here, in this garden."
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Ann Gollifer (b. 1960 Guyana) has lived and worked in Gaborone, Botswana since 1985. A multidisciplinary artist, her own navigation of identity informs much of her work: she was born in a remote part of Guyana to British and Warao-Arawak parents, who travelled and worked widely during her childhood, and completed a Masters in History of Art at Edinburgh University (1983). An Artist member of the Thapong Visual Art Centre, Gaborone, Gollifer was part of the founding executive committee. Gollifer has exhibited in multiple group and solo shows across multiple countries, and her work has been collected by the British Museum, the National Museum of Botswana and the Triangle International Art Workshops amongst others. In South Africa she has worked with printmakers Mark Attwood and Joe Legate and has exhibited at CIRCA Johannesburg (2011) and Everard Read (2009). Solo shows include Guns & Rain (2020), and she has exhibited at 1-54, London (2021), Untitled Art, Miami (2020) and Investec Cape Town Art Fair (2019, 2020 and 2022). She has recently completed a long-term book-art project about her roots in Guyana. Gollifer is one of the finalists for the Sacatar Foundation residency award 2023, taking place in the Bahia state in Brazil.
With Maipelo Gabang, Ann Gollifer co-founded the Art Residency Centre, Gaborone, Botswana, and currently runs the centre with a group of young artist volunteers. She is represented by Guns and Rain, Johannesburg.