Balance/Ballast 

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Coloured pencil drawings uniting two objects of the same weight (historical museum artefacts and discarded waste) which would never otherwise meet, commissioned by Art Work Exeter for the exhibition Pile Up at Exeter Custom House, 2025

 

Overlooked by the 1832 board of tariffs, tentative installations contrast Imperial measuring tools and ‘waste’ materials with Akan gold weights, Abrammuo; small cast-brass figurines used to measure gold dust, which was both a valuable commodity and currency for the Ashanti people of what is now Ghana, West Africa. These weights go beyond financial regulatory function in their physical representation of societal ideals, through depictions of the varied proverbs associated with the Akan culture. Each financial transaction would have been directed by a weight that also provided a form of storytelling, moral education and social commentary; an ethical value system running concurrent with a monetary one. 

 

In 1901, after crushing Ashanti resistance, the British formally annexed this territory, declaring it the Gold Coast Colony. It remained under British rule until Ghana’s independence in 1957. In this period, coin currency was introduced, rendering these weights obsolete. The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter holds a fantastic collection of these artefacts, some of which are currently on display.

 

Work titles are the Akan weights associated proverb, found in the British Museum Collections

 

With special thanks to Benjamina Efua Dadzie, Collections Assistant in Anthropology, Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University Museums and Lara Goodband, Contemporary Art Curator and Programmer and Tony Eccles, Curator of Ethnography, Royal Albert Memorial Museum.

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“We look at an old arrow in order to make a new one” (7 grammes)