Viewing Lakwena Maciver: A green and pleasant land (HA-HA)

Lakwena Maciver has had a bumper couple of years. She has made her name creating electrifying, joyful installations — spanning public murals, panel paintings and banners — with messages of ‘hope, redemption, decolonisation and paradise’. Referencing everyday shared experiences as well as pop culture, fashion and basketball, they have emboldened cities around the world, from London and Paris to Munich and Miami.

In 2021 she launched her much-hyped capsule collection with Fiorucci, transformed the roof of Temple tube station into a kaleidoscopic ‘vision of paradise’, and installed a series of large-scale basketball paintings in the courtyard of Somerset House during 1:54. Now she’s presenting a major solo show of new paintings and textile works at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

For this body of new work, Maciver has drawn inspiration from YSP’s landscape and the 18th-century ha-ha, concealed walled ditches that were built to stop livestock straying into gardens without the need for visible fences. Full of colour and sparkling words, the resulting works explore notions of power, ownership, access, control, boundaries and division. They also examine hierarchies of liberty and space. Like much of her work, these new paintings tackle punchy themes in digestible ways. Get thee to Yorkshire sharpish.