Tag: Quintessence

Last year, environmental degradation in the Niger Delta took global stage when a film Future World, by Nigerian multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker, Wilfred Ukpong won an award at International Tourism’s Borse Berlin’s Golden City-Gate Film Festival in Germany. It was in the Eco-Tourism category.

Since then, Ukpong has been planning to showcase some visuals by engaging with the images that will interrogate the future of the next generation of Niger Delta.  Between November 15 and December 1, the exhibition tagged Blazing Century, will open at Quintessence Gallery, Parkview, Ikoyi, Lagos as a pre-show to the main outing next year. It will feature 9 images that represent what he envisions of the Niger delta region.

Ukpong said at a preview session that his body of works is a response to the socio-economic and ecological issues in the coastal areas of Niger Delta region. He stated that he is using the works as a critique about the future of the region as well as a catalyst for conversation about the region for a change. “I do my artistic practice for advocacy and critical aesthetics that engage issues,” he said.

He disclosed that the main show coming up next year will be held in multiple venues and also tour 16 venues across the globe. He has over 50 sculptures in his collection. Interestingly, he has stopped showing his art at the galleries since ten years for showing sake. “I prefer responding to issues in the region through my art,” he said. However, he still paint.

On his usage of Nsibidi signs and motifs on his works, he said Nsibdi signs are found on the performances especially on sets, adding that the design elements of the stage are influenced by Nsibidi.

He recalled that he lost four men on return from Europe to continue his project on Niger Delta. He disclosed that an 80-minute film on the ecological issues of the region is in production.

After two years of conceptual and engaging maiden exhibition of Beyond Function 1, the duo of Djakou Kassi Nathalie and Ato Arinze have returned with Beyond Function 2, which gives a bold and courageous approach to subject matter and style.

The maiden edition held at Moorhouse Hotel, Ikoyi, Lagos.

The joint exhibition, which will feature 12 works each from the artists, will run till June 24, at the  Quintessence Art Gallery, Ikoyi, Lagos.

To be showcased every two years, Beyond Function 2 is to project ceramics as a genre of art that is not limited to functionality. According to the two artists, functionality reduces the value and commodifies art.

Provoked by the agony and hardship Nigerians experience occasionally, Ato’s manoeuvre offers a trajectory into the rumbles and chaos in the society. As an artist, Arinze’s conceptual art positions him as a social commentator.

In Arinze’s ‘The bullet holes and bullet wounds’, which belonged to his Gray and Red Moment series, the Solidra Award recipient for Sculpture in 2002 presented a commentary on the recent killings in Nigeria by Fulani herdsmen, who attacked villages and settlements at will. He is a Lagos artist, who graduated from Yaba College of Technology, Lagos in 1991.

Using colour as metaphor, Arinze said the outer gray and inner red colours are reminiscent of the current situation in the country. “Red stands for the constant killings, while gray stands for mourning,” he added. The wobbling form he employed in The Bullet holes and bullet wounds delineated the political instability in the country.

For Nathalie, a Cameroonian ceramist, who resides in Lagos, she confronted viewers with guilt-ridden contents and daily happenings. Just as one of her works’ facial expression, presented a horror vaccuum on the body of her works and attested to a spontaneous play of lines and shapes that have been mastered over time. Such expressions made with lines and shapes texturise her works and addressed man as the prime mover of all activities

In Depression, Nathalie engaged the curiosity of viewers with personal imprisonment. She presented a man with his head buried between his knees in a sitting position. She also used circular shapes in repetitive pattern to create transparency and enclosed the work in a spherical form.

Humorous titles such as Guests, Hesitation, and Wonders shall never end offer a peep into human reactions to daily happenings. Both artists employed forms in the service of their ideas and explored elements of art as metaphors for representing situations.

She is the first prize winner of the 2012 African Creativity International Exhibition of Handicrafts, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

According to Arinze, Beyond Function 3 will feature other ceramic and pottery artists to create the presence of pottery and ceramic art in Lagos. “Outside one or two persons in the whole country, we don’t really have ceramic artists that are active in the circle in Nigeria. We have those we do commercial ceramic and pottery on the road side, they are all doing well, but in the area of creative ceramic and pottery we don’t have that.  So, we want to use it to inspire and encourage the young up and coming ceramic/pottery artists so that they will know that it is a good profession and all that.

“We have also created an online group called ‘Vision in Clay’ (VIC) and some of our members featured in our first exhibition and this time around we will feature up to 12 works of the members. We will also open it up for students,” he said.

After two years of conceptual and engaging maiden exhibition of Beyond Function 1, the duo of Djakou Kassi Nathalie and Ato Arinze have returned with Beyond Function 2, which gives a bold and courageous approach to subject matter and style.

The maiden edition of was held at Moorhouse Hotel, Ikoyi, Lagos.

The joint exhibition, which will feature 12 works each from the artists, will run from June 9 to 24, at the  Quintessence Art Gallery, Ikoyi, Lagos.

To be showcased every two years, Beyond Function is to project ceramics as a genre of art that is not limited to functionality. According to the two artists, functionality reduces the value and commodifies art.

Provoked by the agony and hardship Nigerians experience occasionally, Ato’s manoeuvre offers a trajectory into the rumbles and chaos in the society. As an artist, Arinze’s conceptual art positions him as a social commentator.

In Arinze’s ‘The bullet holes and bullet wounds’, which belonged to his Gray and Red Moment series, the Solidra Award recipient for Sculpture in 2002 presented a commentary on the recent killings in Nigeria by Fulani herdsmen, who attacked villages and settlements at will. He is a Lagos artist, who graduated from Yaba College of Technology, Lagos in 1991.

Using colour as metaphor, Arinze said the outer gray and inner red colours are reminiscent of the current situation in the country. “Red stands for the constant killings, while gray stands for mourning,” he added. The wobbling form he employed in The Bullet holes and bullet wounds delineated the political instability in the country.

For Nathalie, a Cameroonian ceramist, who resides in Lagos, she confronted viewers with guilt-ridden contents and daily happenings. Just as one of her works’ facial expression, presented a horror vaccuum on the body of her works and attested to a spontaneous play of lines and shapes that have been mastered over time. Such expressions made with lines and shapes texturise her works and addressed man as the prime mover of all activities

In Depression, Nathalie engaged the curiosity of viewers with personal imprisonment. She presented a man with his head buried between his knees in a sitting position. She also used circular shapes in repetitive pattern to create transparency and enclosed the work in a spherical form.

Humorous titles such as Guests, Hesitation, and Wonders shall never end offer a peep into human reactions to daily happenings. Both artists employed forms in the service of their ideas and explored elements of art as metaphors for representing situations.

She is the first prize winner of the 2012 African Creativity International Exhibition of Handicrafts, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

According to Arinze, Beyond Function 3 will feature other ceramic and pottery artists to create the presence of pottery and ceramic art in Lagos. “Outside one or two persons in the whole country, we don’t really have ceramic artists that are active in the circle in Nigeria. We have those we do commercial ceramic and pottery on the road side, they are all doing well, but in the area of creative ceramic and pottery we don’t have that.  So, we want to use it to inspire and encourage the young up and coming ceramic/pottery artists so that they will know that it is a good profession and all that.

“We have also created an online group called ‘Vision in Clay’ (VIC) and some of our members featured in our first exhibition and this time around we will feature up to 12 works of the members. We will also open it up for students,” he said.

What you would see from the entrance of Quintessence Art Gallery in Ikoyi, Lagos, are artworks of Chamberlin Ukenedo are displayed, with colourful fabric petals stuck and sprinkled on the floor to the doorway of the gallery; leading the viewer to a piece on the wall titled: I Rise, I Shine.

Petals are seen cast on the floor from the alluring piece, contradicting its title, I Rise, I Shine. The mixed media piece on board sets the mood for the show and leads the viewer into the solo art exhibition titled Silent Voices.

Visitors find themselves glued to the works, especially the portrait paintings on board of elongated subjects with exaggerated facial features, such as bulging eyeballs and over emphasised lips.

Silent Voices, the mixed media exhibition, as the theme states, passes a lot of nonverbal messages via the face and other parts of the body. “Silent Voices asserts that the face out there is an art piece; for we cry, we squint, we gaze, we frown, we glaze, we scowl, we pout, we leer, we scoff…at the checkered rhythms of life. When we are stripped of words, the eyes are the messengers of the soul.

“For Silent Voices, non verbal, body language is key for me and for body language, the face sees and does a lot for me, more than other parts of the body. Emphasis is on the eyes because the eyes are the messengers to the soul. And when I make portraiture there is only one area I find very interesting. I see it as one of the most beautiful part of the human body…the eyes can see a lot,” explain the artist.

Majority of the works are on textured and plain boards. “It is intentional,” the artist says, “I wanted to explore surfaces where I can use less of brush and probably use more of my palette knife.” The exhibition is one of those rare shows which you would want the works to be on view for as long as it takes because you cannot just get enough of the works.

As a cartoonist, a painter and an experimentalist, Ukenedo says he is influenced by his environment, “my works speak not just for myself, but also for everyone who shares the same existential space, including the disenfranchised. My perception and ability to portray the complexities of human emotions has inspired this body of works about the everyday Nigerian whose condition has forced a new way – a different medium – of expressing the melancholic soul of his life.”

There were interesting display at the exhibition this year. Ukenedo uses everyday items within his reach, such as oil paint, coffee, pastel, old cassette type wire and buttons, and delicate fabrics, neatly arrayed on the surface of canvas and some on board, which he manipulated carefully to produce captivating pieces, like a minimalist composition made of fragments of intimacy.

“As an artist I don’t limit myself to any surface,” he said, “I am an artist who likes to experiment, I like to try new things beyond what I see everyday.”

The artist from Imo State, a graduate of the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu, has been in the advertising world since graduation. He reveals that this “has improved my art. I have been able to intertwine between advertising and visual art. Advertising is very subjective and visual art is more like my first love.”

In this exhibition, Ukenedo offers an assortment of artworks that raises questions which need urgent answer. One of them is the high number of suicide cases recorded recently with a piece he titled, I’m Fine! (created in 2016), but the half-faced male subject is not fine because you could see tears dropping from his eye. ”I created this painting last year, when I realised that a lot of people were committing suicide; there is nobody to talk to, there is nobody to share with. It is not everybody that you see on the street that is actually what or who you think they are. People are going through a lot.”

It is also worth mentioning that the artist brings to mind the Chibok girls, who have been missing for three years. The piece titled, Save Me! features a half-faced female subject with tears running down her face.”I think it was an accidental installation of the abducted girls in the North-East, who are in the place where they need attention. What I did with this material is to show different faces, they are both in tears, one is a lady and the other is a male; the guy is the opposite of what is on the other side of the painting.

The two paintings produce a strong psychological and emotional tension. The portraits prompt viewers to reflect on the issues, and despite the tears running down their eyes, the male subjects seem to be gazing back at the viewer. The two panel maintain a powerful presence in the show.

How does he start each piece? “What I do is I create sketches and I build up on them…” His works are in Igbo and Yoruba.