Copying and re-using others’ images or artworks always generates considerable debate. Just like solving a crime, it becomes necessary to establish a motive. Almost 200 years separate Thomas Bowdich’s original colored aquatint The First Day of the Yam Custom (1818) from Godfried Donkor’s large replica, which takes the same name and hangs center-stage in his first solo show in Ghana since 2006. His purpose is not repetition or appropriation, but re-imagination and re-presentation. This nine-panel painting, along with three other pieces also on wood and a series of ten collages, is the product of Donkor’s recent four-month residency with Gallery 1957, Accra. Supported to set up a studio, and given time to reconnect with his country of birth and childhood, the artist has re-produced and re-conceived a number of Bowdich’s images, occasionally introducing details from his own observations. The works are hung around a newly created gallery space, in the midst of which sits A Gold Stool (2017) placed upon a plinth covered with a dark cloth. The First Day of the Yam Custom (2017)—almost eleven meters wide—repeats the layout and composition of the earlier and smaller image, a mere 725 mm across. Using oil and acrylic rather than resin and ink, …