If you believe in the ability of dogs to guard a premises, then Marian Goodman Gallery is currently the best-protected arts venue in London. Or at least it would be if the endless alsatians assuming positions throughout both floors of the space weren’t made from porcelain.
Like so much of the work by South African artist Kemang Wa Lehulere, the dogs have a very specific point of reference. In this case, it’s to Sirius (which, as Harry Potter fans will tell you, is also known as the ‘dog star’), and its dwarf moon, an astrological phenomenon the Dogon people of Mali appear to have known about without access to telescopes.
Various attempts at explaining how the Dogon people knew this have been made – including extraterrestrial visitations to Mali – but Wa Lehulere’s point isn’t whether, or how, they knew, but the racism of white Europeans who simply couldn’t fathom black Africans knowing things they were yet to discover.
Stars are also dotted through the exhibition, some fashioned from the legs of repurposed school desks. Here, the constellations take on a secondary meaning, also referencing the 1976 Soweto uprising of schoolchildren brutally suppressed by the police.
Many of the other artworks are also direct responses to the recent history of the artist’s native South Africa. Wooden birdhouses are unfolded and repinned as part of new sculptures alluding to forced relocation during apartheid, a circle of dogs and a sound installation recreate a Xhosa coming-of-age ceremony, and endless casts made from the hands of Wa Lehulere’s aunt (involved in the ’76 demonstrations) repeat.
But even if you know nothing about the ideas behind the show (and haven’t read the free sheet) there’s a quiet beauty to much of what is on display. Chalk drawings, graffitied wooden desks, shoelaces and crates of glass bottles make an eerie ghost of a classroom with the neatly-lined items looking like votive offerings at a makeshift shrine, the canines keeping watch.