Harold is currently tutor in MA Contemporary Art Practice and a visiting lecturer in MA Print. Working across all the pathways in CAP, he mostly engages with students through one to one tutorials, seminars and workshops.
Harold Offeh was born in Accra, Ghana, but grew up in London. He is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. He studied Critical Fine Art Practice at the University of Brighton (1996–99) and completed an MA Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art (1999–2001). He is due to complete his PhD in 2020. He lives in Cambridge and works in London and Leeds, where he is also currently a Reader in Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University. He has also been a Visiting Lecturer at Goldsmiths College, Slade School of Art, the Royal Academy Schools, Central St Martins and School of the Art Institute in Chicago, USA.
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Practice
As an artist, Harold works in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Harold often employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture and is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of history. Recent projects have explored encounters with museum objects and artefacts, forgotten queer histories and intersections of the body and technology. Through performance, collaboration and conversation he develops work that responds to places, situations and histories.
He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including Tate Britain, Tate Modern and South London Gallery, Studio Museum Harlem, USA, MAC VAL, Paris, France, Kulturhusset, Stockholm, Sweden and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark.
In 2018 his projects included performances at Publics, a contemporary art space in Helsinki, Finland. Actions: The Image of The World Can Be Different, Kettles Yard, Cambridge, UK. The Real Thing: Towards a Live Authentic Archive as part of Material Environments at The Tetley in Leeds, UK. Harold also produced a 12-hour live event and film called Down at the Twilight Zone, marking Queer experiences of nightlife in Toronto, Canada.
In 2019, he was artist in residence at the Contemporary Art Centre, Art Tower Mito, Japan and he has had a solo exhibition at Turf Projects, a gallery in London. He is 2019 recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Artist Awards.
In 2020, he will present anew installation for the Wellcome Collection’s season On Happiness, opening in April 2020.
Publications, exhibitions, other outcomes
Solo Exhibitions/Projects
2019 Croydon Plays Itself, Turf Projects, London, UK
2016 Choreograph Me, Iniva London Art Fair, London, UK
2015 Covers Performance, MAC Birmingham, UK
Group Exhibitions/ Performances (selected)
2020
Untitled: Art on the Conditions of Our Time, Kettles Yard, Cambridge, UK
On Happiness, Wellcome Collection, London, UK
2019
Publicness of the Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Mito, Japan
Kabaret Dada, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway
2018
Nuit Blanche: Toronto 2018, Toronto, Canada
Knock Knock: Humour in Contemporary Art, South London Gallery
Faculty of Action, Fargfabriken, Stockholm, Sweden
Flam: Live Art Festival, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Queer City Performance Festival, Regina, Canada
Material Experiments, The Tetley, Leeds
Covers, Publics (Art Space), Helsinki, Finland
Actions: The Image of the World Can Be Different, Kettles Yard, Cambridge,
Elephant Atlas, LCC, London.
More Than An Avalanche, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge
2017
Queer Art Here and Now, Tate Britain, UK
Boite en Valise, Portsmouth, UK, Venice, Italy and Syracuse, USA
Tous, des Sang-Mêlés, Museum of Contemporary Art in Val de Marne, France
Untitled: Art on the Conditions of Our Time, New Art Exchange, Nottingham
2016
We Are the Epi Center, P! Gallery, New York City, USA
We Are the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Center for Curatorial Studies, New York, USA
An Image of Our Own Making, Museet for Samtidkunst, Roskilde, Denmark
Grace Jones Project, Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, USA
Publications
Fictions and Futures a Goldsmiths Afrofuturist Publication, Repeater Books, 2018
Tous, des sang-mêlés, MAC VAL, Museum of Contemporary Art in Val de Marne, France, 2017
An Age of Our Own Making III (Exhibition Catalogue) Edited by Solvej Helweg Ovesen and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, 2017
In Site of Conversation: On Learning with Art, Audiences and Artists. Edited by Turvey, Walton and Daly. Tate Publishing, 2017
Afropean, Mimicry and Mockery Festival of Performance. Visual and Theatre. Mousonturm Kunstlerhaus, Frankfurt Am Main, Germany, 2016.
Awards
Paul Hamlyn Visual Arts Award Recipient, 2019
Arts Foundation Nominee, 2018
Decibel Artists Award Recipient 2006
Arts Council England, Grants for Arts Individuals 2003