Olu Ogunnaike

Born in London, 1986. Lives and works in London.

Taking trees as repositories of memory within the places and communities in which they grow, Olu cites wood as a marker of possible encounters: between past and present; between people and the spaces they inhabit. He is interested in the parallels that can be drawn between humans and trees, tracing the moment a tree is uprooted from one geographical setting and placed in another, where it might be transformed. This story – of the composite and accumulative nature of our identities– is inextricably linked to community, labour and the transaction of exchange.

Beyond a human perspective of linear time, trees have offered Olu a route to looking at questions of provenance and history that surpass current ideas around recolonising history and human one way narratives.                       
            
Forthcoming projects include the Royal Academy of Arts Degree Show, as well as exhibitions with Timothy Taylor, New York, the Museum Folkwang, Essen and the Halle Für Kunst Steiermark, Graz.

Olu obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art from the Royal Academy, London, in 2020 and a BA Hons in Fine Art Critical Practice from the University of Brighton in 2013.

Image credits
Elizabeth Presland