Larry Achiampong’s new film, Relic 4 (2026), revisits the cinematic universe of the Relic Traveller series after a six-year hiatus. The film marks the beginning of a new phase in the project by reuniting audiences with the Voyager character from Relic 1 (2017), portrayed by the artist’s son. Exploring themes of fallen empire, class, and displacement, Achiampong interrogates the structures and residues of colonialism. He poses fundamental questions such as: what and who is shaping history, and whose traces are deemed worthy of preservation?
In Relic 4, the Voyager continues his time-travel journey, navigating physical and mental barriers imposed by histories of empire. The film is set in an imagined future where an alliance known as the Pan African Union has become prosperous and harmonious, whilst the global West is in decline. Free of Western interference and reliance, the Pan African Union develops a form of time travel technology called ‘Sanko-time’, looking to the past to inform how they can responsibly govern the future. ‘Sanko-time’ derives from the Akan Twi word ‘Sankofa’ which roughly translates as ‘to go back for what has been left behind’. The Pan African Union equips the ‘Relic Travellers’ with this technology so they can retrieve testimonies left by ancestors oppressed under colonisation, capitalism, and globalisation. We follow multiple Voyager characters on a collective journey of grief and healing, revealing a renewed optimism for a self-determined future.
The Voyager treks through landscapes and sites marked by the violent expansion of British colonial power, including Tilbury Fort and Tilbury Docks in Essex. Often described as the ‘edge of the world’, Tilbury is seen as a door to the unknown for both those leaving and arriving. Tilbury Fort was originally built in the 16th century to defend London from seaborne attacks entering the River Thames. It was here that Queen Elizabeth I delivered her famous ‘Tilbury Speech’ the day after the navy’s defeat of the Spanish Armada, rallying the army against the ongoing threat of a land invasion. England’s victory was a pivotal moment that changed history, laying the groundwork for England’s emergence as a major naval and colonial power. After the Second World War, the British Nationality Act was passed, designating citizens of the Commonwealth as British subjects and allowing them to live and work in the UK. In 1948, Tilbury Docks received the HMT Empire Windrush with over 800 passengers from the Caribbean on board, migrating to Britain to fortify the workforce and help with post-war reconstruction. Between 1948 and 1971, over half a million people from the Caribbean settled in the UK, later known as the Windrush Generation.
Achiampong’s speculative project considers the current social and political climate, including the decade-long legacy of the 2016 Brexit vote and the rise of nationalism in the global West. Simultaneously, the African Union’s proposed passport programme set out a future in which borders would be open across a unified continent.
As part of the exhibition at KARST, Achiampong will also present his ongoing series Pan African Flags For The Relic Travellers’ Alliance. Developed over the last decade, each flag has been designed to represent African diasporic identity. The colours green, black, and red collectively reflect the continent’s lands, its people and the struggles they’ve endured, while the fields of gold act as a proclamation of prosperity. These works examine our responsibility to learn from the buried tremors of history, rather than framing the Pan African Union as a utopian vision.
Reigniting the Relic Traveller universe, Relic 4 takes the ongoing saga into an exciting and powerful new direction. Anticipating and responding to our current moment, the exhibition confronts the legacy of Brexit rhetoric, channelling present-day apprehensions about an uncertain future.
Relic 4 is supported by the British Council.
Relic 4 will open at KARST on Thursday 15 October (6 – 9pm). Join us for Curator’s Tours with KARST’s Head of Programme, Ben Borthwick, on 6 November and 4 December (1 – 2pm). The exhibition will be on view until 12 December.
About Larry Achiampong
Larry Achiampong (b. 1984, London) is a British-born, Ghanaian artist who lives and works in Essex. His projects employ film, still imagery, aural and visual archives, live performance, objects, sound, and game design to engage with ideas surrounding class, gender, cross-cultural, and digital identity. With works that examine his communal and personal heritage, in particular, the intersection between popular culture and the residues of colonisation, Achiampong crate-digs the vaults of history. These investigations examine constructions of “the self” through splicing the audible and visual materials of personal and interpersonal archives, offering multiple perspectives that reveal deeply entrenched inequalities. In 2025, Tate Publishing released Achiampong’s debut monograph, If It Don’t Exist, Build It. He has had recent solo exhibitions at venues including Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston, UK, 2024; a touring exhibition in the UK at Turner Contemporary in Margate, MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, 2022–23; and PHI, Montreal, 2021, and has recently participated in Sonsbeek 2026, the oldest recurring large-scale public art exhibition in Europe. His work has also been commissioned by Art on the Underground, London, 2022; Liverpool Biennial, 2021; and The Line, London, 2020. Achiampong received the Stanley Picker Fellowship in 2020 and the Paul Hamlyn Award in 2019.
Image credit: Larry Achiampong, Relic 4, 2026 (still), single-channel 4K film with stereo sound. Made with support from the British Council and KARST. Courtesy of the artist, LUX, DACS & Copperfield, London.
