Motunrayo Akinola 'Knees Kiss Ground'

The new solo exhibition by Motunrayo Akinola explores migration, faith and belonging, through immersive installations and light works.

A 2023 graduate of the Royal Academy Schools, Motunrayo Akinola is the South London Gallery’s 13th Postgraduate Artist in Residency - an open submission six-month residency that provides an early-career artist with the opportunity to produce a new body of work and the space to exhibit it. Bonington Gallery partnered with South London Gallery (SLG) to deliver Akinola’s residency – his exhibition was shown at SLG in Spring 2024 and opens at Bonington Gallery on 18 January 2025.

For the resulting exhibition Knees Kiss Ground, Akinola draws on his time spent studying architecture to create ‘Cargo’ an immersive installation constructed entirely from corrugated cardboard to replicate the exact dimensions of a shipping container.

Gallery visitors can enter the shipping container, evoking the harsh reality of journeys some migrants suffer to seek refuge in a foreign land and drawing parallels with the forced migration of Africans on slave ships during the transatlantic slave trade. Akinola’s work explores migration, connecting events from the past to the present to understand their ongoing impact.