Emma Prempeh b. 1996 is a British artist with Ghanaian and Vincentian heritage based in London.
Her practice draws from metaphysical inquiry to invoke and project memories of events, people, and places. She proposes painting as both a container and conduit a site through which visions and subtle signs emerge and reconfigure our understanding of the self. She uses layered surfaces and schlag metal, a brass alloy of copper and zinc imitative of gold leaf, to her often large-scale paintings. Over time the metal oxidises producing slow live visual changes that animate the image and create a meta-narrative around time, memory and impermanence. Prempeh occasionally experiments with projected still and moving imagery to invite other experiential and performative encounters with her work.
Prempeh completed a BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University of London in (2019)and an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art under the LeverHulme Trust Arts Scholarship in (2022). Select solo exhibitions include: Wandering Under a Shifting Sun, London, Tiwani contemporary (2024); In Presence an absence, London, Ordovas Gallery (2023); You were, you are and you always will be, Lagos, Tiwani Contemporary (2022). Select group exhibitions include; Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today, Kettles Yard, Cambridge, (2026), Ever So Present II: Between Home and Elsewhere, New York, Gagosian (2025); Conversations, Walker Art gallery, Liverpool (2024); Free the wind the spirit and the sun, London, Stephen Friedman gallery (2023).
Prempeh won the Ingram Collection Purchase Prize (2019), the Alumno Space Bursary award (2019) and was a participating artist in Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2019). Prempeh won the Valerie Beston Trust Arts award in (2022).