Motunrayo Akinola
That Last Great Tea Party
28-29 May 2026
Motunrayo Akinola is presenting a new performance work with Bolding That Last Great Tea Party which investigates the invisible constructs that govern social mobility. Guests are invited to a 50-seated tea party table where they will engage in a part ritual part game guided by their own judgement. Accompanied by a score of black classical composers, the performance will present the audience with an entanglement of chance, hierarchy, and hospitality in ways that are at once familiar and quietly unsettling. With luck and heat.
The Last Great Tea Party resists passive spectatorship. To attend is to participate, and to participate is to become both subject and witness to the forces the work sets in motion. The performance will be presented as part of Bolding’s ongoing commitment to live and durational practices that centre the body as a site of inquiry.
The high tea table is set with silverware by Frankie Storey
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Motunrayo is a cross-disciplinary artist, working across sculpture and installation. His work explores themes of class, access and a sense of belonging. The work, made primarily from cardboard, tape and shellac, reflects the artist’s architectural sensitivity to our contemporary social environment; part of a post-colonial dialogue guided by conversations of care, collective memory and the politics of hierarchy. As a British-Nigerian who has lived in both countries, Motunrayo’s work examines the subtle differences in how place, identity and movement are experienced. Using ambiguous but familiar materials, his installations evoke forms that suggests both shelter and exclusion, and considers how physical and social structures continue to shape ideas of social mobility, ambition and opportunity. Recent exhibitions include ‘Of Presence and Absence,’ KO Artspace, Lagos (2026), ‘The one about the thing under the bridge,’ Flatland Projects, Bexhill on Sea (2025), ‘I ‘n’ I,’ Magma galleries, Melbourne (2025) and ‘Knees kiss ground,’ South London Gallery, London (2024).