Tyburn Gallery is pleased to present Moffat Takadiwa’s first UK solo exhibition Foreign Objects from 5 November 2015 – 9 January 2016. Born in Karoi, Zimbabwe, in 1983, and currently based in Harare, Takadiwa is known for his simple but intricate installations made from found materials, including spray-can debris, plastic bottle tops and discarded electrical goods. Through the works exhibited, Takadiwa engages our senses, both literally and visually, as a unique way for identifying foreign materials, items and objects.

Takadiwa’s practice engages with issues of material culture, identity and spirituality as well as social practice and the environment. The exhibition groups together wall-hung sculptures that bear witness to the cultural dominance exercised by the consumption of foreign products in Zimbabwe and across Africa. Imported consumables become symbolic of the shifting power struggles within post-colonial Zimbabwe, resulting in the uneven distribution of economic and cultural power across the country. Greatly influenced by the Argentine semiotician Dr. Walter Mignolo’s scholarship on ‘coloniality’ and modernity, Takadiwa’s work is an explicit challenge to contemporary governments whose pledges on indigenous empowerment are failing to come to fruition.

Part of the post-independence generation of artists in Zimbabwe, Takadiwa has exhibited extensively across major institutions in Zimbabwe as well as internationally.

This exhibition is the second at Tyburn Gallery, a new contemporary art gallery founded in London in 2015 by Emma Menell. The Gallery is dedicated to international contemporary art, representing, exhibiting and supporting emerging and established artists from a global range of evolving art scenes, with Africa as a point of departure.