The New Year of 2010 welcomes in two major exhibitions, in two different cities, of the work of one extraordinary international artist: Aubrey Williams. October Gallery, London and Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool, have joined forces to produce two linked and overlapping solo exhibitions of Williams’ work together with the publication of a new catalogue providing fresh insights into one of the twentieth century’s great artistic spirits.

Born, in 1926, in Georgetown, Guyana, Aubrey Williams remains one of the great enigmas of twentieth-century painting. He can be seen as a colossus, bestriding the Atlantic, with feet firmly planted in two very different worlds. Yet his brilliant career remains unknown to many, unacknowledged by all but the most insightful of art critics and art historians.

Featuring alone in the Front Gallery : “In the World, But Don’t Know the World?” a major new metal sculpture by El Anatsui, which was premiered at the 3rd Moscow Biennale in September 2009.

Accompanied by an exhibition of artists including W.S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Rachid Koraïchi, Aubrey Williams, Huang Xu and Kenji Yoshida.

El Anatsui has to date explored a wide range of different media and materials to create a wealth of different sculptural pieces over a long and distinguished career. Of late, he has drawn much attention worldwide with his highly ingenious metal sculptures made from tens of thousands of liquor bottle-tops forming magnificent wall sculptures. The title “In The World But Don’t Know the World?” references the new developments in understanding by which humanity strives to progress. The work consists of a series of independent and interchangeable units and with its free-flowing possibilities of form becomes a metaphor of the mind’s creation of meaning – as much an epistemological tool as it is an object of beauty.