Current Exhibition

Haraz - Ibrahim El-Salahi - 7 June – 27 October 2024

As a ten-year celebration of Vigo Gallery’s inaugural exhibition with Ibrahim El-Salahi, Vigo presents Haraz in partnership with English Heritage at Wellington Arch.

Comprised of works from both El-Salahi's celebrated Tree series, many of which featured in his 2013 Tate Modern retrospective, and more recent Pain Relief works on paper and canvas, the exhibition reflects El-Salahi’s fascination with the Haraz tree, indigenous to Sudan, which has peculiar and inspirational characteristics. 'I am very much obsessed with my work. I am a painter and have no other profession. I go to bed dreaming of figures, forms, and colours and wake up to translate my visions and dreams into works of art. My style changes, but I keep working on one particular theme inspired by a tree, an acacia locally called the Haraz that grows on the banks of the Nile. During the rainy season the tree is leafless, and it blossoms with freshly budding green leaves when the weather turns dry and the river flows at its lowest towards the sea. Through all, the tree remains steadfast, silently watching over the passage of seasons and time.' Of the Haraz’s blooming he says; 'This is a definitive statement. Like saying ‘I am me! I am an individual! I do not follow what everyone is doing! When everyone is going to be green, let them be green. I am not!’ It’s individuality. I love that very much.' - Ibrahim El-Salahi, Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams, Tate Catalogue, 2013. This series is an ongoing investigation of the tree / body metaphor, a link between heaven and earth, creator and created; controlled meditations with the emphasis on the spiritual.

MoMA, Tate, Guggenheim, British Museum, National Museum of African Art Washington, and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and Newark Museum all hold El-Salahi’s work in their collections, he is undoubtedly one of the most important and influential figures in African and Arabic modernism.

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Past exhibitions include: 

• Prost, by Henry Krokatsis. The exhibition included an installation that transformed the interior space of Wellington Arch. In place of fine hardwoods, Krokatsis’ functional yet subversive remake of the floor used two tonnes of discarded material. 
• Invincible Summer, by Erin Lawlor. The exhibition depicted snapshots of windows of time in the studio and come to encapsulate that peculiar life-drive that goes hand in hand with the hardest of times.

• In and Through, by Matthew Burrows. The exhibition included larger scale works by Matthew Burrows, the fruition of his In and Through series which he developed during the COVID pandemic.  

• Vertical Planes, by artist Jordy Kerwick. Vertical Planes is a playful reaction to history - or alternate histories - of Wellington Arch and some of the characters immortalised by it.

• Pain Relief, by artist Ibrahim El-Salahi. Work on display was created by the Sudanese Oxford-based artist between 2016-2018 from the comfort of an armchair when he refused to let physical restriction limit his ambition.