The Nearness of Elsewhere

Launch 3 October 2025 | 6-8 PM (quiet hour 5-6pm)
87 Princes Avenue, Hull HU5 3QP

Exhibition tour with Emma Prempeh (free to attend): Saturday 4 October 2025, 11:30am – 12:30pm

Reflecting on her London upbringing and her African-Caribbean heritage, Emma Prempeh consistently returns to the theme of home. Utilising magic realism, she re-examines diasporic identity through storytelling and myth, commenting on the circularity of time and memory. Her work assesses her personal relationship with place and highlights the stories of others who share a similar existence.

For The Nearness of Elsewhere, Prempeh has created an immersive installation of painting and digital projection. The exhibition aims to transport visitors to an environment that feels equally distant and familiar, encapsulating diasporic experience in the UK and beyond. It is inspired by research visits to Hull, where the artist led workshops and attended community gatherings to incorporate the stories of local people and places. Flowers from local greenspaces are merged with blooms from Prempeh’s native South London. Interiors featuring bay windows, such as those commonly seen in terrace houses around Hull, collide with views of the Humber Bridge as seen from the Humber Bridge Country Park, a marker of returning home for many who live here.

This summer, Prempeh invited people in Hull to contribute creatively to the canvases, encouraging reflection on interiors and natural environments that hold personal significance. Visitors collaborated with her to add their stories in text, image and mark-making. Look carefully to see these expressions amongst Prempeh’s fluid brushstrokes, and visit Our Community Gallery to explore them in detail.

Courtesy of the artist and Tiwani Contemporary