Onyishi Wins 2014 National Art Competition grand prize

Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian Breweries Plc, Mr. Nicolaas Vervelde (left); the Director, African Artists’ Foundation, Mr. Azu Nwagbogu; Overall Winner, 2014 National Art Competition, Mr. Erasmus Onyishi and Competition Judge, Mrs Therese Belisle-Nweke shortly after the prize was announced at the Grand Finale of the 2014 National Competition held at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos on Wednesday.  

French Ambassador, Sastourne at Banjo's Mind Revolution

French Ambassador, Francois Sastourne (right) with renowned artist, Nike Davies-Okundaye (left); exhibiting artist, Olawunmi Banjo and Henry, director at Legacy Management (managers and sponsors of Banjo), during the opening of Mind Revolution at Nike Art Centre, Lekki, Lagos. 

GFA is the only professional body of artists in Nigeria by Ibrahim

By Tajudeen Sowole

Hamid Ibrahim.

Despite its relatively low 42 members, a Lagos-based group, Guild of Professional Fine Artists of Nigeria (GFA) has given the country her first, perhaps, the only professional body of artists, says the guild's Vice President Hamid Ibrahim.

Currently in his second tenure as executive members of the Abraham Uyovbisere-led GFA, Ibrahim who is a painter of over two decades in practice briefly reviews the GFA's five years in existence during a chat and argues that so far, the welfare focus of the group has been achieved. "It took us a long time to stand firm," Ibrahim says during a visit to Interlocking Energies, a two artists art exhibition featuring his works and Sam Ebohon at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos.

In 2008, the GFA, under its founding President, Edosa Ogiugo and Vice President Abiodun Olaku created quite a controversial dusts when the group made its existence formally known in Lagos. Some artists saw the new group as a parallel professional body to the Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA), the country's umbrella for all artists, founded 50 years ago. But the GFA members insisted that the new group was not a parallel body, but a necessary gathering to cater for the need of artists who live on their art.  Between then and now, the dust of controversy has cleared and its time for reality. From its first induction in late 2008 to several group exhibitions in Nigeria and the U.K, as well as making impact as a group at auctions in London, GFA appeared to have proven that its formation was indeed "necessary."

However, the membership strength from 23 in 2008 to 42 - some months ago when over 20 new members were inducted  - seemed too lean for a national body in a country that has visual artists in thousands.  "GFA is the first body of professional artists in Nigeria," Ibrahim argues. Any other body of artists prior to the formation of GFA, he notes, was all inclusive. His argument seems to explain the deliberate slow pace of membership drive. "SNA is a body for all artists, including non-full time artists." The GFA, he explains is not much about numerical strength, but more of artists’ wellbeing. "The primary aim of the group is the welfare of members."

In its formative years, artists were "invited" to join GFA. Two years ago, the process changed to open entry. But the professionalism criteria have not changed; full-time practice is a must.  From 10 years full-time experience handed down as criteria for membership five years ago to a review at the inception of the Uyovbisere-led administration four years later, there has been more flexibility. "The last set of members came in through open entries with a downward review from 10 to 5 years experience." The review, Ibrahim explains was necessary considering that the "guild is still young" relatively to the number of full time artists that exist in the Nigerian visual art profession. Also reviewed downward, he discloses, was the entry fee from N100,000 naira to N50,000 naira. The guild, he cautions was never in a hurry to get more members. "Every five years, we add new members."

Promoting works of members via regular art exhibitions and occasional art auctions abroad, particularly at the yearly Africa Now auction organised by Bonhams are two of the several advantages the GFA has. On two editions, some select members have had their works featured in the Special Sections of the Bonhams auction. And as Nigerian artists are seeking proper representations at home and abroad, GFA seems to have one already in Aabru Art, a London-based promoter. The promoters organised Transcending Boundaries, a show that featured many members of GFA and few other non-members last year. " Aabru Art represents us in the U.K currently, and we are working towards another show next year."

As an individual artist who has contributed to the promotion of full-time studio practice, in the past 20 years of post-training, Ibrahim set out early enough to define his kind of art. "I just wanted to be an expressionist," he responds to what is possibly a transitory period from realism to abstraction. After Interlocking Energies, his canvas, he discloses, will most likely be populated with abstract contents. He however quickly adds: "not shifting in the real sense, just that I won't go into as much realism as I used to." He admits, like most artists, that "after a while you get bored with realism." Analysing artists' shifting themes and styles or technique, Ibrahim who got his Higher National Diploma at Yaba College of Technology (Yabatech) in 1990, argues that "sometimes, the school factors are tributary." Abstraction and other non-representational form of art have always come under the suspicion of a section of Nigerian critics, more so when artist involved has not been known as skillful in other realism-based forms. Although contemporary art practice appears to have demystified some basics art knowledge such as drawing skills, Ibrahim still echoes the voice of art's purists. It is ideal to start from the known and prove yourself before experimenting, Ibrahim warns. This much, he boasts, he has done. "I have started from the known, and now heading for the unknown." 

In 2010, Ibrahim's solo exhibition titled Content of Time, held at Mydrim Gallery Ikoyi, Lagos, asserts the artist's exploit of impressionism forms. Four years after, at Terra Kulture, contents of Ibrahim's work in the Interlocking Energies, reflect the dismal state of unprecedented degeneration, which Nigeria has been plunged in the last five years. While some Nigerians release their frustrations through venomous contents via the internet's social media, Ibrahim as an artist has the visual license to exhale the despair that most Nigerians bottled up daily.  Just in case you have never been part of a group of protesters or physically got close to them in action, Ibrahim's painting simply titled Protests, brings the pains in the eyes and veins of the oppressed people very close such that the heat of the anger radiates from the canvas. Perhaps, Nigerians, as the adage goes, has found their future reduced to ashes in the urn of nemesis as a people who deserves the current leadership of the country, so suggests another painting, Our Leaders, Us and Nemesis.

As artists - all of a sudden - are being pushed to add voice against the declining state of the nation, Hamid says that the two works "are inspired by the disturbing and endless search for responsive leadership in Nigeria." He laments that the hope of truly responsive leader for the country was cut short by the death of Umar Musa Yar'adua, President of Nigeria (2007-2010). "We saw hope in Yar'adua, a president who declared his assets and created atmosphere for rule of law through freedom of the judiciary," he argues, noting that the relief brought by the late president during his three years "is now the opposite currently."

 Showing with Ebohon in Interlocking Energies,, he discloses, was to consolidate the closeness between him and the artists he has known right from school years at Yaba College of Technology, Lagos.

Our Leasers by Hamid Ibrahim

Ibrahim's build-up to a fulltime studio artist started over 25 years ago when he was Illustrator/Visualiser: at Concept Unit and Laurel Graphix Advertising Agencies, Lagos (1988-1990); Art Teacher: Command Secondary School Jos (1990-1991); Freelance Cartoonist: Sunday Standard and Lagos Weekend (1990 -1991); Illustrator, Lantern publications; and Illustrator/Cartoonist: Hallmark Newspaper.

As a student, he won the Best Life Drawing at the School of Art, Design and Printing Technology, Yabatech, (1990) and later picked Award for Excellence in Painting organised by Academy Press (1990).

His exhibitions include Heritage, National Museum, Jos, (1991); Reflections of Our Mind, National Museum, Lagos (1992); Essence Russian Cultural Centre (1995); Content of Time, Mydrim Gallery, Ikoyi (2010); Celebration of Colors (ADSA) Art and Design Student Association (1990); Exhibition of Art and Design, Art and design Students (1990);

Young Masters Art Trust Saloon Exhibition, Ikoyi (1990); National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Exhibition, Abuja (1991); Mydrim Gallery Opening Exhibition, Sururlere, lagos (1991); Transcending Boundaries, London. (2012); A Few of My Favourite Things, Parkburst, Johannesburg (2009) and Society of Nigerian Artist, National Theatre (1991), among others.

From Nwokolo, Possibilities of creative changes

By Tajudeen Sowole

As much as a drastic change in medium has turned the canvas of Alex Nwokolo into an enthralling relief, the artist's periods of change in creative contents also raise alert over state of the nation.  Nwokolo's traditional painting on canvas appears to be diminishing and giving way to a radical change, so suggests his  ongoing solo art exhibition titled Possibilities, at  Miliki, Victoria Island, Lagos.

From Alex Nwokolo, Anatomy of Man II

In the last two years, Nwokolo's art has turned almost 360 degree from painting on canvas to relief rendition using discarded materials and soft metal sheets. In 2012, his solo art exhibition Authenticity of Thoughts, at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island unveiled what would later become his new period: a bridge between traditional way of making art and contemporary practice. However, the artist always insists that the change is just in the medium, not in the themes.

Known for crowd-effects in such themes as rooftops, human clustering and other captures of environments, his styles in multiplicity of images had been well established using painting on canvas. For his new period, the same themes are now rendered in soft metals such as flattened cans and discarded electronic parts.

Perhaps for a change of space to stress the fresh breath, Possibilities finds itself in a non-regular art gallery space like Miliki, a relatively known event venue. As the spot and creative lightings are conspicuously missing in the body of work, which could have enhanced viewing, the natural daylight flooding of the moderate space struggles to compensate for the vacuum. And on a hot noon, when the sun pierced through the glass doors with near boiling temperature, works such as Society, Dominion II, Isale Eko - not directly flooded by the daylight - exude resplendence.

The title and focus of the exhibition is like a double edge sword, Nwokolo explains to me during a chat inside his studio, at Onikan, Lagos, ahead of the opening. "Anything is possible." And during a lone visit to Miliki, Possibilities shows that, indeed anything, including the state of the Nigerian nation is unpredictable.

From the artist's Oju (Face) series comes The Victim (Nigeria Now), a mixed media of newsprint and paintings. Quite a thoughtful piece in The Victim, a work that touches the state of economic and political oppressions, currently strangling crucial spheres of Nigerian environment: a wounded face with head injury, bandaged to the point of masking, the artist explains, "represents the state of the oppressed people in Nigeria." The masses, he argues, have not had it "as bad as it is today."

From the Nwokolo's regular signatures comes City Slickers, a multiplicity of images, which perhaps stress the other side of a society losing its youths to non-productive economic liability. But it could get to a dangerous state, so suggests another work, just in case the political elites on top of the affairs of Nigeria are not getting the signals of consequences of insensitivity and irresponsiveness. The work titled Syria depicts current happening around the world with an aerial view perspective of a country in ashes, which Nwokolo renders in burnt materials is enough as an alert.

Nwokolo is not new in protest art: in Authenticity of Thoughts, one of the works, Subsidy Unrest, depicts sea of protesters, perhaps at the Gani Fawehinmi Park, Ojota, Lagos. Rendered in flattened metal sheet and spray painting, the piece revisits the anger against the fuel subsidy removal of January 2012, which nearly gave Nigerians the much-awaited revolution.

Reality of the state of the nation, but temperature raising themes in some of Nwokolo's works at Possibilities would probably be too hard to handle in an atmosphere of constant noise of power generators on a hot afternoon on Etim Inyang Street. The relief therefore comes in coolant such as Argungu Festival, a yearly fishing gatherings of natives in northern Nigeria and Regatta, a similar riverside festival, in some parts of the south. And that naturally, the two festivals, which usually come with large number of participants, share crowd commonality with Nwokolo's crowd effect themes adds aesthetic energy to the Miliki space. Still on the crowd effect, an assemblage of discarded electronic components though brings artistic perspective into the central Lagos slum, Isale Eko, but indicts past physical planners of Lagos State. 

With over 22 years of studio practice, Nwokolo, who turned 50 in July 2013 is not exactly blank on the other side of the next five decades, so suggests the energy in Possibilities. When asked about his future last years, he stated that “as my art keep evolving, new ideas come; for now I take things as they come, no scripting.”

At Lagos festival, visual, poetry in Merging Stories of identity

By Tajudeen Sowole

Either as a haunting or retrospection channel, memories have ways of shaping identity, so suggest the thematic contents of visual artists and a poet at the art exhibition section of the 2014 Lagos Art and Book Festival (LABAF).

Image from the video presentation of Jelili Atiku’s performance art.

Titled Merging Stories and curated by Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo, the gathering featured works of performance artist, Jelili Atiku, painter Odun Orimolade, photographers Numero Unoma and Aderemi Adegbite, the curator as well as poet, Jumoke Verissimo, Specifically, the exhibition focuses on Identity within the context of "lived and inherited history."

On the opening day of LABAF, the ebullience narrative of performance artist Atiku, which has been consistent on themes such as identity and imperialism welcomes visitors in a video format at the entrance of the exhibiting space of Freedom Park, Lagos Island.  This time, it's one of the artist's recent works presented at a festival in Richardplatz, Berlin, Germany. Titled Alaagba, it revisits the geographical cuttings, into pieces, of the continent of Africa at the Berlin Conference of 1884. Enacted in two characters performance by Atiku and a French artist, Anne Letailleur before a crowd of audience, the blackening and costuming of the features questions identity in post-colonial era.

The performance, which Atiku describes as "the egungun (masquerade) method" was originally conceived and presented "to deconstruct stigma." And as the content fits into the Merging Stories exhibition at LABAF 2014, it also raises a question: is there really any identity issue for the white character in the performance to deconstruct? That is not a burden for Africa, the artist says. Europe and other agents of imperialists, Atiku explains, have the challenge "to decide if there is anything they want to deconstruct."

On the left side of the exhibiting space comes a scary figure, familiar though. It's a full size sculptural figure of a man in the notorious yellow kits of health workers who battle the deadly Ebola virus. Titled Yesterday Is Still Here, it's one of the works by Nwosu-Igbo, warning people not to be complacent. As installation artist, the curator of the exhibition has a way of subtly sending a chill down the spine of viewers with her method of presentation. And on the identity issue, of which most nation states in Africa keep battling as the rubbles of colonialism, Nwosu-Igbo seems to excavate the real thoughts of quite a huge population of frustrated Nigerians in another installation. Titled I Have Loved Nigeria For Too Long, the spreads of figures and other components in the challenge of nationhood, perhaps, also offer a deep self-probe on the sincerity of the much proclaim "love" for Nigeria by her nationals. 

In No Need to Bleed, a conceptual composite about woman, photographer, Unoma exudes creative image in a semi-silhouette that stresses fragility of the softer gender. Also, a torso exposure of a lady under captivity titled Always Stumm explains the photo artist's thought on identity.

Orimolade continues her monochromatic painting that focuses on psychoanalysis themes. For the gathering, two works of hers, perhaps among the pieces she showed at Art Twenty One lately, on display include Emanating and Offo Latinu.

What has a molue, commercial passenger bus, doing in the art space of LABAF?  The inscription on the yellow bus 'Molue Mobile Museum of Contemporary Art (MMMoCA) offers an answer. It's actually an installation by photographer Adegbite. Inside the bus, the artist engages school children on the strength of photography in communication.    

 The curator of Merging Stories, Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo

For Verissimo, one of her poems, The Sun That Goes Up contextualises identity thus: Know no grief. Look into the hours of Your arrival into the world Remember the last smile Of faces approving your arrival.'

From the curatorial note, Nwosu-Igbo states: "Identity in art is a worn-out but perennial argument that mankind must inevitably revisit. If nothing else, the fact that there is nothing new under the sun necessitates that every now and then, old arguments, theories and issues are revisited and debated all over again. But the issue of identity in particular is like that itch that never goes away no matter where you scratch or how often you scratch. Perhaps the reason it never goes away is because we have never really answered that question satisfactorily and the questions that result from this debate are almost infinite. To begin with, what is identity? Such a simple question with no unanimous answer, the reason for this being significance. What is more significant? Traditional ideas or modern ways? And even when we choose to embrace both as the sum total of who we are, the issue then becomes, which of these ideologies should dominate? In merging our past with our present, is there a formula for arriving at our most authentic self in creative expression? Should modern African art consist of forty percent tradition and sixty percent modern? Or do we split it down the middle? If yes, why? If no, why not?

And there are more unanswered questions. How relevant are cultural practices that today’s artists never even witnessed and yet are forced to lay claim to in their bid to be original? At what point does forcefully adopted identity become fraudulent? Do artists commit fraud when they choose what their culture or reality is? Should this issue of fraud be taken seriously? Who is a creative fraudster and what are the parameters for identifying such a person? Should we even care that in trying to be African, artists are forcefully adopting practices that are as alien to them as the idea of alien abduction in Africa?

"And it doesn’t still stop there. In trying to be African, we cannot neglect the overpowering influence of shared realities necessitated by globalization. So does shared experience discredit the very idea of cultural purity or at the very least, cultural identity? Why is it even that important that we be African in our work when we grew up watching mickey mouse and drinking coca cola like the average kid in New jersey or England? What should identity really be? What shouldn’t identity be?

"So you see, there are too many unanswered questions regarding identity and in our exhibition Merging Stories, we cannot promise to answer all these questions. But one thing is for certain. We are definitely not done with the issue of identity no matter how hard we try. So here is to trying. Seven art creators were‎ invited to channel their confident voices, tell dominant stories and spark discourses around their practices. The works span a range of media including installation, collage, video art, performance, drawing, spoken word, happening, photography and Film. The artists included are Odun Orimolade, Aderemi Adegbite, Efe Paul Azino, Femi Odugbemi, Jumoke Verissimo, Jelili Atiku, Numero Unoma and Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo."