In 2017, artist Larry Achiampong began working on a multi-disciplinary project that would play a vital role in his practice for the next decade. Relic Traveller manifests in performance, audio, moving image and prose, taking place across various landscapes and locations. The series builds upon a postcolonial perspective informed by technology, agency, the body and narratives of migration. At the time, it distilled the turbulent and rapidly changing social and political climate of the moment. Most notably, it considered the rise of nationalism within the global West and tensions around moments such as the UK’s referendum decision to leave the EU in 2016. Meanwhile, the African Union’s passport programme, also established in 2016, moves towards the opening of boarders across a unified African continent. The Relic Traveller series aims to imagine a future in which the global west devolves to a point of decline, whilst the African Union ascends into a prosperous and harmonious collective. Achiampong took the initial work and expanded it in Phase 2 (2019) and Phase 3 (2021), moving on to consider the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns.
This Autumn, Achiampong presents a new step in this evolving project, Relic 4 (2026) at KARST, Plymouth, revisiting the cinematic universe of Relic Traveller after a six-year hiatus. The ongoing film series interrogates the architectures and residues of colonialism, exploring themes of fallen empire, class and displacement. Achiampong poses fundamental questions: what and who is shaping history? Whose traces are deemed worthy of preservation? The show builds upon the existing series, set in an alternate reality where the Pan African Union uses time-travel technology to retrieve testimonies from people collectively oppressed by colonisation, capitalism and globalisation. The films follow various “Voyagers” across desolate landscapes as they gather the voices of communal memory. This emotional journey of grief and healing reveals a renewed optimism for a self-determined future.
Relic 4 feels like a defining moment in the artist’s career. The story revisits the original Voyager character, featured in Relic 1 (2017) and portrayed by the artist’s son, Sinai Lee Achiampong-Rose. In this new film, the Voyager continues his time-travelling journey, navigating physical and mental barriers and borders and taking him to places of historical significance that weigh heavily as symbols of imperial pasts. These include the Tilbury Fort and the Port of Tilbury, both of which served as backdrops to the violent expansion of the British Empire. In 1948, the Port of Tilbury received the first groups of post-war Caribbean emigrants on the ship Empire Windrush. It is a pivotal moment in British history, marking the beginning of mass immigration from the Commonwealth between 1948 and the 1970s. In 2018, as Achiampong created his work, the Windrush Scandal surfaced after it emerged that hundreds of individuals had been wrongly detained, deported and denied legal rights, despite arriving from the Caribbean as legal British citizens.
The show at KARST is the latest in an impressive lineup for Achiampong. His work has been displayed in venues including Turner Contemporary, Margate; MK Gallery, Milton Keynes; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; and PHI, Montreal. He has also been commissioned by Art on the Underground, Liverpool Biennial and The Line, highlighting his place as a defining voice in UK contemporary art. In 2023, Achiampong won the Aesthetica Art Prize for the film, Wayfinder, which follows a young girl’s journey across England. Travelling from North to South, she passes through different regions towns and landscapes, encountering people, stories and situations on her way. The epic film builds a dialogue about class and economic exclusion, belonging, displacement and cultural heritage.
KARST’s exhibition expands beyond Relic Traveller, presenting the ongoing series Pan African Flags for the Relic Travellers’ Alliance. Established across the last decade, each flag is designed to represent African diasporic identity. The colours green, black and red reflect the continent’s lands, people and struggles endured, while the fields of gold act as a proclamation of prosperity. The piece began with a commission for Art on the Underground, a programme which invites artists to create work for London stations, changing the way people experience the city. The pieces are seen by millions of people, and other major artists who have contributed to the fabric of the transport system include Helen Cammock, Laure Prouvost, Linder, Lucy McKenzie, Phyllida Barlow and Yayoi Kusama. Achiampong’s piece reimagines Westminster station, disrupting the traditional red and blue logo that has been synonymous with the Underground since 1908.
Achiampong has a unique ability to both anticipate and respond to the present moment. His works are born out of a specific experience, whether that be politics or the Covid-19 pandemic, but maintain a timeless quality, speaking to universal themes of identity, belonging and class. Relic 4 adds to this impressive creative legacy. The piece examines the decade-long impact of Brexit and the influence of its rhetoric, feeding into current-day apprehensions and thoughts of tentative futures. Reigniting the Relic Traveller universe, this show at KARST, Plymouth, takes the ongoing saga into a powerful new direction.
Larry Achiampong: Relic 4 is at KARST, Plymouth from 16 October – 12 December: karst.org.uk
Words: Emma Jacob
Image Credits:
1&5. Larry Achiampong, Relic 1 (2017), video still from single channel film with stereo sound. Commissioned by PS_Y, with funding support from Arts Council England. Courtesy of the artist & Copperfield, London
2. Larry Achiampong, Relic 0 (2017), video still from single channel 4K film with stereo sound. Made with funding support from Southbank Hayward Gallery, Jerwood Charitable Foundation & Arts Council England. Courtesy of the artist & Copperfield.
3. Larry Achiampong, Relic 2, 2019 (still), single-channel 4K film with stereo sound. Made with funding support from Arts Council England. Courtesy of the artist and Copperfield, London.
4. Larry Achiampong, Relic 2, 2019 (still), single-channel 4K film with stereo sound. Made with funding support from Arts Council England. Courtesy of the artist and Copperfield, London.
