Harold Offeh’s lab will explore how performance and re-enactment using the body and movement can activate and respond to cultural histories. Drawing on a range of practices from the visual arts, theatre and live art, Offeh will facilitate a space of self-study, where participants are invited to work with their own movement practice and define the subject and content they want to respond to.
Participants of all disciplines are invited to use their own sources and references: archives, collections, images, sounds etc as starting points. Over the three days they will explore and play, drawing on a number of activities and prompts and working individually and collectively. Games, improvisation and tableaux work will provide a way into thinking about process.
The lab will investigate the potential of the body as a research tool for posing provocations and gathering information and will culminate in an afternoon of sharing and reflective discussion.
Harold Offeh is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of histories. He employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture. He has exhibited and performed widely in the UK and internationally including Tate Britain and Tate Modern, South London Gallery, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, Wysing Art Centre, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, MAC VAL, France, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark and Art Tower Mito, Japan.
Offeh studied Critical Fine Art Practice at the University of Brighton and has an MA in Fine art Photography from the Royal College of Art, London and a PhD in Contemporary Art and Performance from Leeds Beckett University. He lives in Cambridge and works in London and Oxford. He is currently a Senior Tutor in Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford and a tutor in MA Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art, London.
