Selected by Larry Achiampong
The first time I came in contact with Mataio Austin Dean’s art practice was at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2019 as a visiting lecturer. Understandably students don’t tend to have an approach that is quite as figured out at BA level, however the humble yet relaxed confidence with which Austin Dean spoke and presented (even performing vocally at one point, which I will get to) suggested otherwise.
His work takes on varied methods and approaches – often rooted in research and historical narrative, highlighting while re-examining issues such as colonial histories and workers’ rights, sometimes intertwined with his Guyanese heritage and familial stories. Where I find a kinship with Austin Dean’s practice is in the embodiment of ‘call and response’. The ‘call’ being the right (and responsibility) to question and interrogate history; or using, in his words, ‘Marxism as a tool for emancipatory praxis’.
The ‘response’ is plural – in one guise, Austin Dean uses draughtsmanship through detailed etchings and largescale drawings that uncannily blend visions of the past and present. In another he brings to life centuries-old folksongs and child ballads with a deep and warm voice that commands your silence and the attention of your ears. In current and future times of crisis and polarisation we will need holders and tellers of stories, both of realities known and those that are yet to be uncovered or imagined. Austin Dean’s work, both in and outside of the art scene, will be needed in that future.
Mataio Austin Dean’s work has been exhibited in New Contemporaries (2021), and his writing has been published in The Socialist Review and UCL’s The Poetry Shed. His singing features in Larry Achiampong’s film Wayfinder (2022).
Larry Achiampong is an artist who lives and works in London and Essex.
