For her first UK exhibition, ‘A Countervailing Theory’, Nigerian-American artist Toyin Ojih Odutola casts herself as the director of the fictional Jos Plateau Research Initiative in Nigeria, who has accepted an invitation to present the results of her team’s ten-year investigation of a black shale rock discovered during mining works by a Chinese investment company in Plateau State. The pictorial markings and motifs uncovered by the team signal a sophisticated and intentional art-making practice by a civilization that predates the Nok – the oldest documented population in the region.