Book Launch: Harold Offeh – Mmm gotta try a little harder it could be sweet

Join us for the book launch of and conversation around Mmm gotta try a little harder it could be sweet, documenting two decades of artist Harold Offeh's video, performance and collaborative projects.

Hear Harold Offeh and the book's co-designer Jak Skot in conversation and responding to a series of unrehearsed questions prepared by the book's other co-designer Alex Farrar, revealed on screen in real time. These questions will be accompanied by a slideshow of images of the publication and the ongoing exhibition of the same name taking place at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, Offeh's first major institutional solo show in the UK.

The event invites audiences into the processes behind the project, including the reshooting of the artist's earlier works, the recurring phonetic gesture "mmm" and the typographic and material choices that connect the book and the exhibition as intertwined works.

Copies of the book

Signed copies of Mmm, Gotta Try a Little Harder, It Could Be Sweet will be available to purchase during the evening. All profits support the work of Camden Art Centre.

About the book

Mmm, Gotta Try a Little Harder, It Could Be Sweet documents two decades of video, performance and collaborative projects by Harold Offeh. This new monograph is published to accompany the exhibition of the same name at Kettle's Yard in November 2025, the first institutonal solo exhibition of the artist's work in the UK.

Offeh's art interrogates our acceptance of social, political and racial models in society, often drawing inspiration from mainstream music, film and media. The title of the exhibition is taken from lyric by the British band Portishead and corresponds to three thematic sections of the exhibition: Mmm, a new multi-channel sound installation, Gotta Try a Little Harder considers Offeh's use of performance as an investigative tool and It Could Be Sweet looks at the artists participatory and collaborative works on themes of desire, utopianism, queer identity and acts of resistance.

With preface by Lubaina Himid and new essays by Sepake Angiama, David. A. Bailey, Anna Khimasia and Harold Offeh.