Francis Offman, Economics of Painting (2024)

Exhibition dates: Friday 3 May – Sunday 23 June 2024.

Offman's paintings hold stories of individual memory and collective experience. Using everyday materials such as coffee grounds, scraps of paper and textiles, the artist pays close attention to the economies at play in world. The materials included were representative of local and international histories, carrying both the history of mass-production, global supply chains, and the transatlantic movement of goods, but also the histories of the friends and communities who gathered and gifted these materials to the artist.

Offman is from Rwanda and emigrated to Italy with his family following the civil war and genocide in 1994. The coffee which textured much of his work is a primary commodity in African countries including Rwanda, and while grown nowhere in Italy it is embraced there as a beloved national drink. Through considered inclusions of such items, the artist acknowledged the complex realities which underpin commonly held associations.

With Offman’s reflections and experience of escaping the Rwandan genocide thirty years ago, this body of work contemplated an urgent emphasis, resonating with the current global and political climate, and the displacement of millions of people across the globe.