Installation view: Raheel Khan, 'Memory Police' (24 October–14 December 2025) at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art. Courtesy Goldsmiths CCA. Photo: Rob Harris.
Installation view: Raheel Khan, 'Memory Police' (24 October–14 December 2025) at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art. Courtesy Goldsmiths CCA. Photo: Rob Harris.
Installation view: Raheel Khan, 'Memory Police' (24 October–14 December 2025) at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art. Courtesy Goldsmiths CCA. Photo: Rob Harris.
EPISODE 15: RAHEEL KHAN
Memory Police
Raheel Khan (b. 1992, Nottingham) took part in Goldsmiths CCA’s ongoing commissioning series Episodes. Khan’s new constellation of works pivoted between paranoia and security, in response to shifting political realities in the UK and a sense of latent catastrophe. At the heart of the exhibition was Island, a large-scale sculptural installation constructed from disused front doors gathered from around south London. Brought together they formed an enigmatic structure, suggestive of a home, or hastily erected shelter. Misted windows provided no clear view inside, the only observable aspects of the internal space were the intermittent glow of lights. A projection onto a high wall declared a faintly whispered and looping ‘YES’, whose meaning, through repetition, slid from affirmation to authoritative imperative. Far above, a tannoy played out a sound of breath passing tonelessly through a trumpet.
The exhibition’s title referenced The Memory Police (1994) by Yōko Ogawa, a surreal dystopian novel set in an authoritarian state that enforces the disappearance of objects and their associated memories. The book accompanied Khan’s research into contemporary political realities and historical moments in which individuals navigate various structures of state control; from surveillance to language itself. In Khan’s work, these forces were brought into contact with the poetics of the suburbs, counterposing public and private space, particularly through the concept of ‘prospect-refuge’; a theory of humanity’s desire for habitation that is protective, but that also gave an opportunity to view the environment for potential threats. Island provided this dual aspect, situating the home as both shelter and confinement, and prompting a parallel reading of the uniformity of suburbia, authoritarian drives, and the isolationist state of the nation.
Tannoys mounted high in the space played out the sound of an empty trumpet, and bass episodically rattled from the structure itself. In Islamic eschatology, the angel Israfil waits for a sign from God to make a trumpet blast and signal the Day of Judgement. The angel rests, the trumpet at its lips, in patient readiness to proclaim the as-yet-unrealised calamity. This work extended Khan’s use of a compositional and research framework that abstracts the terms machine, devotion and acoustic, into themes addressing policy, time-loops, mystics, religion, and frequencies.
The new commission at Goldsmiths CCA was part of a series of interconnected events by Khan, running across Camden Arts Centre, London Performance Studios and Goldsmiths. Responding to the exhibition’s themes through sound and live performance, each element of the programme has been developed with collaborators.
EVENTS
Performance: GRAIN Presents: Theodora Laird, Caius Williams & Guests
Great Hall, Richard Hoggart Building
07 Nov, 6.30pm-9pm
Read more.
Talk: Andrea Zarza Canova in conversation with Raheel Khan
Goldsmiths CCA
12 Nov, 7pm–8.30pm
Read more.
Site-responsive performance: Raheel Khan
Camdem Art Centre
06 & 07 Dec, 6pm
Read more.
Performance: Where or When?, Raheel Khan and Gray Wielebinski
London Performance Studios
(POSTPONED TO 2026)
Read more…
BIOGRAPHY
Raheel Khan (b.1992, Nottingham) who graduated from MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths University of London, is a London based artist & composer working in installation, performance & text. Recent presentations and performances have been at Bold Tendencies, London (2025); Nottingham Contemporary ‘Your Ears Will Know to Listen’ (2024); Auto Italia, London (2025); South London Gallery, London (2024); Lisson Gallery and Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London (2024); Palmer Gallery, London (2024); Longsight Community Art Space, Manchester (2024); Deptford X, London (2023); Ovada Gallery, Oxford (2023); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022); Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester (2022); Tramway Gallery, Glasgow (2021); Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Edinburgh (2021). Khan is the recipient of the Almacantar Studio Degree Show Award (2024) and Goldsmiths Alumni Award (2025), was nominated for Frieze Artist Award (2025) and shortlisted for the Arts Foundation Futures Award (2025). Khan previously graduated from BA Economics at Manchester Metropolitan Business School.
Read Less...
