Stephen Akpo is a British Nigerian artist based in London. His practice is rooted in painting and extends into sculpture, exploring consciousness, memory and survival through embodied, tactile processes.

Working primarily by hand, Akpo builds, erodes and rebuilds surfaces over time. Paint is layered, pressed, worn back and re-formed, allowing images to emerge gradually rather than assert themselves. This process privileges touch, proximity and duration over optical clarity, resulting in works that sit between abstraction and figuration.

Akpo’s approach is informed by his partial sight and by sustained work with vulnerable and displaced communities in London. Rather than illustrating specific narratives, the paintings hold traces of psychological states, bodily memory and endurance. Forms appear and recede, resisting resolution and remaining deliberately unstable.

In recent years, sculpture has become an extension of this thinking. Sculptural works translate the same material logic into space, engaging with weight, balance, erosion and time. Conceived as quiet presences rather than monuments, they invite movement and physical navigation.

Akpo has exhibited widely in the UK, including a solo presentation at the Sarabande Foundation and participation in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. His work has been shown during London Fashion Week and Frieze Week and has been featured by BBC The One Show, Wallpaper magazine, The Standard, and Grazia. He was shortlisted for the Mosaic Art Awards and his work is held in private collections.

His practice is underpinned by a commitment to timing and emotional intelligence. Whether in painting or sculpture, the work asks how memory is held in the body, how surfaces carry lived experience and how art can create space for histories that resist clear articulation.