Wayfinder is the first major solo exhibition by British-Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong. Working in film, sculpture, installation, sound, collage, music and performance. Achiampong draws on popular culture and his communal and personal heritage – exploring post-colonial and post-digital identity, and the deeply entrenched inequalities in contemporary society.

The exhibition includes the feature length film Wayfinder (2022), which follows the Wanderer, a young girl played by Perside Rodrigues, on an intrepid journey across England, travelling from the North to South.

Achiampong has also curated a display of paintings by JMW Turner and an interactive gaming room in collaboration with Turner Contemporary. 

The display text is set in Caslon Doric by Commercial Classics, bringing several disparate styles of type together from the nineteeth century.

Taking inspiration from directional signage and text displayed in large sizes. The typeface has considerable impact with bold-weighted capitals and condensed form, especially in the lowercase. Text positioning and arrangement alludes to character titling in video games, often seen on playable and non playable characters in MMORPGs.

The exhibition includes the largest UK presentation of Achiampong’s Relic Traveller, 2017 – Present. This multi-disciplinary work envisages a pan-African alliance of travellers who explore landscapes of the near future, collecting testimonies of those who have been historically oppressed by colonialism, capitalism and globalisation. The installation incorporates all five Relic films, Relic flags and a new series of life-size Relic Traveller figures (The Relic Travellers’ Alliance: Assembly 1 & 2, 2021). 

Alongside his exhibition Achiampong has curated a display of paintings by JMW Turner. He has selected a group of oil paintings, watercolours, engravings and sketchbooks, predominantly from Turner’s British tours and including locations which feature in Wayfinder. 

The Gaming Room showcases many of the video games that have influenced Achiampong’s work, examples include; Ico, Journey, Inside, Legend of Zelda and Ori and the Blind Forest. The Gaming Room includes playable consoles, a workshop area, a stage for talks and game soundtracks.