Tidal Memory
- Artist
- Mara Okafor
- Dates
- 12 Sep – 22 Nov 2026
- Rooms
- Gallery 1 & 2
- Works
- 14 paintings, 2 prints
Curatorial text
For eighteen months Mara Okafor painted from a borrowed boatshed on the Douro, a few hundred metres from where the river meets the Atlantic.
Twice a day the tide pushes salt water upstream and the river turns brackish, heavy and green. Okafor began collecting that water in jars and using it to thin her paint, so that each canvas holds a trace of the estuary at a particular hour. The results are her largest and most restless paintings yet: surfaces that pool, drag and dry in rings, like a shoreline after the water has gone.
Tidal Memory brings together fourteen paintings and two editioned prints. In Gallery 2, a long vitrine shows the jars, tide tables and notebooks that structured her days.
Curated by Elena Marsh
Works in the exhibition
Select a work to view it closer
Checklist
Price list & dimensions
| No. | Title | Year | Medium | Size | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Low Water, Porto | 2026 | Oil on linen | 160 × 160 cm | £18,500 |
| 2 | Undertow (Rose) | 2026 | Oil and pigment on linen | 140 × 140 cm | £16,000 |
| 3 | Salt Bloom | 2026 | Acrylic and ink on canvas | 120 × 150 cm | £12,800 |
| 4 | Spring Tide | 2025 | Oil on canvas | 150 × 150 cm | Sold |
| 5 | Slack Water I | 2026 | Archival pigment print, ed. of 8 | 90 × 68 cm | £2,400 |
| 6 | Estuary Song | 2026 | Oil and wax on linen | 180 × 240 cm | £24,000 |
