A radical exploration of stones, sub-terrain, and speculative worlds in the artist’s first UK solo exhibition
Nolan Oswald Dennis, recurse 4 a late planet (lush), 2024. Wallpaper. Courtesy the artist and Swiss Institute New York. Photo: Daniel Peréz
Gasworks presents ‘throwers’, the first UK solo exhibition by Johannesburg-based artist Nolan Oswald Dennis. Known for their expansive diagrams and politically charged installations, Dennis brings together large-scale murals, intricate drawings, and a live installation that collectively examine the subterranean forces shaping our political, ecological, and cosmological realities.
At the heart of ‘throwers’ is a challenge to colonial ideas of a singular, knowable “world.” Instead, Dennis proposes multiple frameworks for envisioning a Black planet shaped by fragmented histories, material resistance, and cosmic possibility.
A central feature of the show is a new iteration of recurse 4 a late planet (2024–ongoing), a vast mural that layers astronomical, geological, and political narratives into a speculative history of stones. Drawing on archives of near-Earth asteroids—particularly “potentially hazardous objects”—Dennis connects celestial threats with a grounded history of stones in mythology, ritual, and protest. Three-dimensional notes, including beads, shells, and archival fragments, are embedded into the mural’s surface, gesturing to the world-ending and world-mending powers of rocks set in motion.
For the first time, Dennis presents ‘throwers’, a personal archive of photographs depicting people throwing stones—capturing the act not just as protest, but as a gesture of agency, resistance, and transformation. This archive is paired with Isivivane (2023–ongoing), a growing installation featuring a 3D printing machine replicating rock specimens from London research archives. Tended daily by Gasworks staff, the installation will evolve throughout the exhibition, forming what Dennis calls a “Black Earth library.”
Additional works include further notes 4 a planet (2025), a wall-based diagram that maps speculative links between worlds, blending social, ecological, and cosmic timelines. Through this and other interconnected pieces, Dennis explores the fragility of life and the systems—both visible and invisible—that govern it.
The Black Earth Study Club, a space for collective reflection and transdisciplinary exchange, grounds the exhibition. Convened by interdisciplinary writer and curator Imani Mason Jordan, the club invites artists, thinkers, and scholars to respond to the themes of Dennis’s work, in an open setting that centers shared learning and sociality.
The exhibition will be on view from the 24th of April until the 22nd of June 2025. For more information, please visit Gasworks.
