Image credit: Leah Hickey, Offering, 2023. Courtesy the artist.
Contemporary Exhibitions

Communion

Leah Hickey, Jamal Lloyd Davis, Tomilola Olumide

The New Art Gallery Walsall is delighted to be working in partnership with Multistory to present Communion. Initiated as part of Multistory’s artist development programme, Blast Creative Network (BCN), this opportunity sits under the Assembly programme strand, which supports and platforms emerging artists in the Black Country through a yearly exhibition.


In our first year of working in partnership on this project, we are delighted to be working with artists Leah Hickey, Jamal Lloyd Davis and Tomilola Olumide.

In our first year of working in partnership on this project, we have worked with artists Leah Hickey, Jamal Lloyd Davis and Tomilola Olumide, supporting their creative and professional development as well as commissioning new work. The title of the exhibition, Communion, stems from overarching themes in the artists’ work that relate to being in communion with oneself and others, sharing intimate space and the re-contextualisation of faith. The artists share an interest in text and language as an essential component of their work and these can be found woven throughout the exhibition.

Leah Hickey draws on English Romantic poetry and auto-fiction to create rhythmic verse, typographic painting and gravestones.  Her work is influenced by classical American cinema, performative femininity and Christian and Druidic rituals surrounding death. Leah is interested in stone with regard to ritual and memory as well as the crafts of stonemasonry and engraving. She has collaborated with a local stonemason to develop new work as part of her ongoing series Offering.    

Jamal Lloyd Davis is a photographer and filmmaker who explores the nuances of the human experience. He is interested in portraiture and observations of the everyday.  His experimentation with both text and the colour blue allude to his interest in raising awareness of mental health issues, particularly within the Black community. For this exhibition Jamal turned the camera on himself for the first time, presenting black-and-blue, a new series of self-portraits that intimately explore his own experiences with anxiety.

Tomilola Olumide is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist who often draws on materials and memories from her childhood in Lagos. In her new work, Chronicles of Respite, the artist explores the importance of rest and self-preservation. Acts of joy and play, and a call to remain present in life’s daily routines thread throughout the series, which spans across poetry, textile, sculpture and metal work.


Exhibition preview

Thursday 8 August 2024, 6-8pm. All welcome

In Conversation

Saturday, 9 November, 2pm. Free.

Join all three artists for an informal introduction to their work.