Harold Offeh: Being Mammy

Since completing an MA in Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art in 2001 Harold Offeh has developed a body of video work that tries to engage with discourses of identity, representation, language and desire. Adopting strategies such as performance, animation and found footage, his work also seeks to confront the viewer with an assessment of contemporary popular media, i.e. music, TV and cinema.

Being Mammy is an attempt to explore the world of the 'Mammy' caricature and evoke the tragedy of the type cast actor doomed to recreate and replay the same role. The exhibition is the culmination of a research project commissioned by Picture This. Offeh has worked with sources from the Bill Douglas Centre, based at the University of Exeter, where he examined the life and career of actress Hattie McDaniel, who famously played and won an Oscar for her role as 'Mammy' in Gone With the Wind. This multi-media installation combines several performance video works contextualised by a series of objects including replica pre-cinema artefacts, posters and other ephemera.

Commissioned by Picture This as part of Ghosting, a national touring exhibition of newly commissioned moving image works by Erika Tan, Harold Offeh and Ansuman Biswas which explore themes of archive, memory and ethnography. Funded by Arts Council England.

Exhibition:
26 November 2004 - 15 January 2005

Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth

26 November 2005 - 8 January 2006

Chapter, Cardiff

18 February - 8 April 2006

Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham

03 - 25 June 2006

A Bond, Bristol