Acme Studios — Samson Kambalu

Supporting Artists since 1972


Samson Kambalu

Fire Station Residency
2005-2010

Samson Kambalu works in a variety of media, including site-specific installation, video, performance and literature. His work is autobiographical and approaches art as an arena for critical thought and sovereign activities. His basic influences are Situationism, the Nyau prestation social structures of his native Malawi and the Protestant tradition of inquiry, criticism and dissent.

Samson's first novel, a portrait of the artist growing up in Africa, The Jive Talker or How to Get A British Passport, published by Jonathan Cape and Simon and Schuster in 2008, was awarded Winner of the National Book Tokens Global Reads Prize in 2010. Recent selected gallery exhibitions include: Postcards from the Last Century, Peer, London, 2020, Nyasaland Analysand, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, 2019, Graphomania, The James Gallery, The Graduate Centre, CUNY, New York, 2018, Wounded Negatives, Zietz Mocca, Cape Town, 2017, Ghost Dance, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, 2017, and Nyau Western: American Psychogeographicals, Art Basel Statements, Switzerland, 2017.

Fire Station Residency 2005-2010

Acme's residency at the Fire Station is one of the most directly supportive schemes for artists in the United Kingdom, providing combined studio and living space at low rents, as well as a half rent residency for a deaf or disabled artist. This five year fixed-term residency scheme is intended to allow artists more time to concentrate on the development of their work and professional careers, and less time working to survive. 2005-2010 residents were selected by former Acme co-director Jonathan Harvey, arts consultant Tessa Jackson and artists Hayley Newman, Erika Tan and Julie Umerle.