Tanoa Sasraku

Terratypes are unique, sculptural hybrids of painting, drawing, collage, printmaking, and textiles. Sasraku forages for million-year-old earth pigments at various poles of the British Isles – Dartmoor, the Jurassic Coast, and the Scottish Highlands – hand-rubbing these into sheets of blank newsprint. These are sewn, soaked, and ripped, revealing past layers of pigment and pattern; the intersection of geological time and personal memory.
The process itself, involving laborious pattern cutting, recalls her Ghanaian heritage and, in particular, her relationship to her late father, whilst the fringing bordering each Terratype expresses the unique textile application of the Fante Asafo flags of coastal Ghana, fabricated by Sasraku’s paternal ancestors. Geometric forms printed onto the Terratypes’ surfaces reference electrical circuitry and the flow of a deep, earth-rooted energy, whilst the tartan stitch patterns are influenced by Sasraku’s relationship with her Scottish partner. The result is mysterious, ceremonial-like objects weathered with centuries of materiality, presenting a new way of engaging the landscape.

With the additional support of
Spike Island Gallery, Vardaxoglou Gallery, The Simon Nixon Collection, African Futures Institute