Larry Achiampong, ‘Wayfinder’ (2022), at Aberdeen Art Gallery

We are excited to present a screening of Larry Achiampong’s ​‘Wayfinder’ (2022) at Aberdeen Art Gallery.

Please join Rachel Grant (Project Manager Aberdeen Programme, LUX Scotland) and Phoebe Banks (Programme Assistant, Aberdeen Programme, LUX Scotland) for an informal chat and refreshments after the screening. The event will take place in the Seminar room on level 2 of the gallery.

This public screening event is part of a wider professional development programme by LUX Scotland for early career Aberdeen-based artists and curators. The programme includes workshops, screening and discussion events and is supported by Aberdeen City Council Creative Funding.

Larry Achiampong, ​‘Wayfinder’, (2022). 84 mins

‘Wayfinder’ is Larry Achiampong’s first feature length film about class and economic exclusion, cultural heritage and the meaning of home in pandemic stricken England. It follows the Wanderer, a young girl played by Perside Rodrigues who travels from the north of England to the south, passing through different regions, towns and landscapes finding herself in a series of poignant encounters with people, stories, songs and situations along the way.

Across six chapters, including ​‘The North’, ​‘The Big Smoke’ and ​‘The Kingdom of the East’, the Wanderer acts as a witness to places, histories, accounts and conversations; from a housing estate in Wellingborough to the Turner wing of the National Gallery. Reckoning with an England of today, she bears witness to accounts of alienation, its inequality, and contradictions. Drawing on a diverse range of references from video games, landscape painting, sci-fi and folk song, the work navigates a fictional journey, rooted in reality. Addressing an unreconciled history of empire and inequality, ​‘Wayfinder’ asks: who is allowed to feel that they belong?

The film’s cast includes former athlete Anita Neil OLY, Britain’s first Black female Olympian, Musician and Artist Mataio Austin Dean (The Griot), and a trippy dialogue-driven scene (set within East London Café E. Pellicci in Bethnal Green) portrayed by Maa Afua and Russell Tovey among others.

‘Wayfinder’(2022) first debuted as part of his first major solo exhibition at Turner Contemporary in Margate. The work was originally commissioned by Turner Contemporary with MK Gallery and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary.

Image description: A young girl in a large bright red waterproof anorak sits in a wild field surrounded by tall green grass and small pink flowers. Behind her, a stone wall, and she is holding a pink mask.