Postcards from a Promised Land
Arthur Timothy is an architect and painter whose works depict close family members and autobiographical events, specifically in Accra, Ghana where the artist was born, and Sierra Leone, where he lived until the age of 9. The paintings are inspired by small black and white family photographs and are imbued with vibrant colour, added from his memory and imagination, which update and bring life to the original imagery.
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POSTCARDS FROM A PROMISED LAND

GALLERY 1957 | LONDON | 8 DEC – 28 JANUARY 2023

Postcards from a Promised Land is Arthur Timothy’s third solo exhibition.

VIEW ON GALLERY 1957

Painted from family holiday pictures taken from 1985 until the present day, Timothy’s new series presents Sierra Leone as a country in an ongoing state of renewal. Depicting abandoned buildings reclaimed by nature, alongside snapshots of neighbours hurrying to church services, Timothy’s reflections on the structures, people, and natural landscape of the country where he grew up, offer a beautiful and nuanced insight into its development as a whole.

Marking a departure for the artist, POSTCARDS FROM A PROMISED LAND sees Timothy focusing increasingly on nature, celebrating Sierra Leone’s beauty and resilience in the face of adversity. Many of the works are based in or around the capital of Freetown, a city founded in 1792 as a settlement for freed African American, Afro-Caribbean and Liberated African slaves (many who had received freedom from the British in return for fighting against the US in the American War for Independence).

Celebrating it as a place of great natural beauty, despite struggles endured in the wake of slavery, colonialism, Ebola, and civil war, Timothy’s artworks encapsulate both the dreams and failures of the ‘promised land’ this city offered for the displaced Creoles for whom it was created.