Emma Prempeh b. 1996 is a British artist with Ghanaian and Vincentian heritage based in London.

The starting point to Prempeh’s paintings is the matter of blackness – the tonal properties of the colour establishes the ground to her paintings and a cinematic basis to invoke and project memories of events, people, and places to emphasise an appreciation of ancestral time and relationships, selfhood and transformation. Schlag metal, a brass alloy of copper and zinc imitative of gold leaf, is a material that Prempeh applies to selected areas of her often large-scale paintings. Over time this oxidises creating slow, live visual changes that animate the image and create a meta-narrative around our experiences of the passing of time, memory and its representation. Prempeh occasionally experiments with projected still and moving imagery to create painting installations that invite other experiential and performative encounters with her work.

Prempeh Studied at Goldsmiths University of London graduating in 2019 winning the Alumno/Space bursary award for 2020. She won 1st place for the Ingram Collection Purchase Prize and became a participating artist in Bloomberg New contemporaries 2019. Prempeh attended MA Painting at the Royal College of Art under the LeverHulme Trust Arts Scholarship winning the Valerie Beston Trust Arts award for 2022.

PRESS


Some Signs Follow: Emma Prempeh’s Solo Exhibition

Ifeoluwa Olutayo , The 49th street, March 22, 2025

Belonging In-Between

Cecilia Monteleone, Muse Magazine, March 13, 2025

‘It’s important because it’s a part of me’

: why a growing number of African diasporic artists are showing work on the continent

Gameli Hamelo, THE ART NEWSPAPER, March 4, 2025

Emma Prempeh wants you to feel what you can’t touch

Izzy Bilkus, PLASTER, January 8, 2025

Royal Mail issues Windrush 75 stamps

Stephen Spark, Soca News, June 24, 2023

Royal Mail issues stamps to mark 75th anniversary of Windrush arrival

Mabel Banfield-Nwachi, The Guardian, June 15, 2023

The Artists Trending This May

Artsy, May 26, 2023

Lots to Love at Frieze New York 2023

J. Scott Orr, WHITE HOT MAGAZINE, May 19, 2023

The 10 Best Booths At Frieze New York 2023

Arun Kakar and Josie Thaddeus-Johns, Artsy, May 18, 2023

Between Continents, Emma Prempeh Is Making a Home

Chloe Schama, Vogue, May 17, 2023

March Exhibitions at No.9 Cork Street

Frieze, February 27, 2023

Prempeh In You Were, You Are, And You Always Will Be

Gregory Austin Nwakunor, The Guardian, September 11, 2022

Forget the Summer Exhibition — meet the 5 art stars of tomorrow

Waldemar Januszczak, Sunday June 26 2022, The Sunday Times

Emma Prempeh

Also Journal, November 11 2021