BEAF 2023: Harold Offeh interview

Harold Offeh by Emile Holba

Harold Offeh is an artist living and working in the UK. He’s known for using history and humour in his multimedia work to encourage audiences to think differently.

For BEAF 2023, BEAF Arts Co commissioned him to do what he does best: combining his video, audio, performance and photography with his learning and social arts practice to create something truly wonderful.

Boscombe World  is an adventurous visual and sensory art installation, inviting curiosity and play. Ask anyone who’s seen it and they’ll agree: there’s nothing quite like it.

Harold Offeh, photo by Ashley Carr

Harold, when were you first aware of the arts?

That’s a big question. I’ve always been aware of the arts, through activities such as drawing, acting, creative things I was drawn to. But not always aware that they were given that title.

At 14, around the time when you had to decide what GCSEs you were going to do, I became aware of these structures.

Your early influences included a lot of popular culture…

Yes, definitely. I always enjoyed music, television and film. I didn’t realise necessarily that I could reference those things as art. It’s something that came later, maybe at art school.

For a long time, there was a separation of history of art, visual arts and popular cultural things. Through the art I’ve been able to really think through a relationship with popular culture and referencing popular culture and there being less of a separation.

Growing up, with reference to popular culture, what would you say were your favourite things?

That’s a good question. I think I was a consumer of lots of things. Maybe something like the Muppet Show. As a kid, I remember having lots of Muppet merchandising and Sesame Street as well. That mixture of real people and puppets. I was really drawn to that. Having a lunchbox, a flask… [laughs].

MTV, music videos, growing up in the 90s, I was really into things like TripHop, the whole Bristol scene. Something I was very obsessive about [laughs]. I would get on coaches to see Massive Attack or Portishead. I went to Bridlington from Brighton to see Portishead.

HR Bold Tendencies 2021 Arcadia Programme Harold Offeh, Hail the New Prophets © Bold Tendencies, courtesy Bold Tendencies Photography_Damian Griffiths

Was it always a dream you would make a career from the arts?

No, it wasn’t. I think I was quite lucky in that my form tutor at school was also my art teacher. She was very good in just saying, “You should just pick things you enjoy.” That informed a lot of my choices.

I remember seeing a career advisor while I was studying A levels and I said what I was going to do, and they said, “Oh no, you can’t do three creative subjects. You’ve got to have balance.” I told my form tutor and she said, “That’s rubbish. It’s really important you do things you’re motivated by, that are going to hold your interest.”

The only pressure was that my Mum wanted me to go to university. She didn’t care what I did. It was quite unusual really, for an immigrant parent. She wasn’t obsessing about me being a doctor or a lawyer. She just said I want you to go to university.

Looking back, I had quite a lot of freedoms. I work a lot with students and it’s actually very tough for them to choose to do creative subjects or to choose to study art. Because there’s this sense of ‘how are you going to get a job?’, ‘how are you going to survive’. So I was quite naïve… I had some good guidance that gave me the confidence to make those choices.

Is there any advice you would give to your younger self?

I think just to believe in the things that you’re interested in. Have confidence in them. Looking back, I didn’t really have the confidence in the things I enjoyed. I thought I had to please or conform to things that I saw around.

So, I think it would be to just have more confidence in the things that you enjoy, find interesting, and immerse yourself in that.

Croydon Plays Itself, photo by Tim Bowditch

I read that you were a fellow latch-key kid. I can relate to this concept myself. How did these experiences influence your artistic experiences and how you see the world?

Looking back at it, I would say a degree of freedom. Formalise it: agency and independence. From a very young age I had to go to school and then take my sister to school and pick her up on the way back. I would cook for myself, I had chores and choose what I would watch.

There is a narrative now that this would be framed as neglect, but looking back I think it just made me very independent and creative. I wouldn’t be watching TV all the time, we’d be doing other stuff. My sister and I would muck around, doing dance moves to music videos.

Reading the Realness 2021 photo by Jules Lister

You once said you’re always asking, “Who is not part of the conversation? That’s who you need to be addressing.” How has this curiosity steered your creative direction for Boscombe World?

I think for me it’s really entering into a project where it’s a context or place that I don’t know that well. I’m really entering into a dichotomy between coming in as a stranger. What’s useful in that role, potentially, is I’m going to be asking questions, the basic, obvious questions, where people who are from there, who are experts with deep knowledge and a cultural understanding of the place, might overlook.

Equally, I’m naïve and innocent to that place. It’s an opportunity to draw out through asking those questions. Being a stranger or a guest, people often go into host mode. Some of the meetings I’ve had in Boscombe, they tell you what the problems are, but they also tell you what they really love. So you get a much richer picture.

Finally, what advice would you give to anyone feeling like they want to be creative but it feels a world away from them?

It’s recognising you can be creative with very little. You don’t necessarily need a lot of resources and a lot of finances. Often creativity – as many artists know – comes out of the problem solving with a lack of resources and then trying to make something. Turning those structural economic problems into something.

But I recognise that that’s a skill and that can take confidence, so I think it’s also important that if young people are interested and engaged, for them to try to find organisations, structures that can support them in doing that. Often it can be really hard to be creative on your own.

There are a lot of youth services and arts provision that have been scaled back over the last 15 years, but there are still things in many communities that people can find. Sometimes people think that galleries are just about art, but sometimes they have learning education programmes with free workshops, people just don’t know about them.

If you are interested, recognise that you can do things. You don’t need money or a lot of resources. If you’ve got a phone, a piece of paper, try to think about how you can be creative with that. But also then try to seek other people out, either to work with, create things with or organisations that can give you support. There are things out there.

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Harold Offeh’s Boscombe World opens at Boscombe Arts Depot, as part of BEAF 2023 Arts Festival, on Friday 16 June until Sunday 25 June.

Read more about Harold’s approach to creating Boscombe World

See what’s on at BEAF 2023 Arts Festival