African Works

Soly Cissé

2011-04-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

Soly, as many of you will know, is one of Senegal's most successful and prolific artists - he paints with gusto - and I believe some of his work is truly inspired. It has that sense of the mystical and there is a vigour about the work and the man that is exciting.

Here are some very strong works from a series that he has only just produced - they are all 80 x 80cm acrylic and pastel on canvas.

email me quickly if you are interested by them as his work is in demand.

ed@edcrossfineart.com

http://edcrossfineart.com/cisse.html

Life Imitating Art: Michael Soi, the ICC and the "Ocampo Six"

2011-04-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

Michael Soi | Hague Express No 5.| 77cm by 65 cm| 2011
Since April 2008 , Nairobi artist, Michael Soi, has been producing a series of paintings entitled Hague Express celebrating the hoped for departure from Kenya of those (to be) indicted by the ICC over their role in the 2007/8 post election violence which claimed 1220 lives, uprooted whole communities and lead Kenya to the brink of civil war. Today (April 5th 2011) Kenya witnessed the fulfillment of Soi's prophetic vision as some of the accused flew out of Nairobi on a KLM flight to Holland - all six accused will soon be at the International Criminal Court. In a poll from the Kenya's Daily Nation published today 61% of those polled approved of these prominent men being hauled out of the country to face justice in Europe. Real justice at home would be better but this development is viewed as a massive step in the battle against what is now viewed by many as the the biggest evil of them all - impunity.
Michael Soi | City in The Sun | 122 x 183cm | 2011
Michael Soi's wish for justice is shared by almost all Kenyans, and he was not alone in producing politically charged work in the early part of 2008 whilst his country teetered on the brink and his countrymen were slaughtered by incentivised mobs. But he was possibly unique in painting his vision of a desirable outcome and faithfully continuing this until - almost miraculously - Messrs Ruto, Kenyatta et al, were forced to head to the Hague (with expensive government lawyers in tow) this week. Soi is understandably proud and pleased that Sr Ocampo himself is the owner of painting No 4 in the series.

Soi is something of an amiable giant -ruled by an irrepressible sense of humour and a satirical but benevolent view of life. He is all artist and no politician - but he like many other Kenyan artists are profoundly concerned about standing up against injustice.

The visual arts in Kenya are still a minority interest - there is no National Gallery, the National Museum leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to contemporary art - but artist groups like Kuona Trust , where Soi has his studio, have flourished and little by little contemporary artists are leaving their mark on the national consciousness through exposure via newspaper reviews probably more than anything else. Kenya's cartoonists - Gado being the most famous - have for years flown the flag of cheeky defiance - even during the dark days of the Moi regime. Soy who is an artist - not a cartoonist - is nevertheless an inheritor of that brave and humorous tradition. His work is Hogarthian in its rollicking satirical portrayal of everyday hypocrisy and farce. His characters engage you in a way that is uniquely Kenyan. And he has developed an economical and powerful visual language that will ensure him an important place in the country's art history. They used to say that all the important art came from West Africa - well that was not true then and it certainly isn't now.

Works from a new series about working women by Michael Soi

For further information about works by Michael Soi contact me by email ed@edcrossfineart.com

Ed Cross 4th April 2011

Sekano's Women

2011-02-13T13:41:00.000-08:00

Charles Sekano Princessly Mixed Media on Paper 76 x 50cm

Charles Sekano Looking Back Mixed Media on Paper 76 x 50cm

Given the scarcity of art schools across much of the African continent it is not surprising that many of this continent's finest artists are "self taught", but whilst many artists like Richard Onyango and Jak Katarikawe are musicians (Eduard Saidi Tingatinga from Tanzania started out as a Makonde dancer) it is relatively rare to find a man who invented himself as both painter, poet and pianist. Such a man is the South African (former exile) artist - Charles Sekano. Thirty years of his life was spent in Kenya (from the 60s – 90s) escaping the poison of apartheid. His bold and passionate use of colour - a one man crusade against any kind of colour bar.

An uneasy relationship with publicity, which as his gallerist I have just frustratingly experienced at first hand, has contributed to his being more of an artist's artist, though he is a legend to many with a serious interest in East African art. He has unapologetically existed in the shadows, like so many of the subjects of his paintings. There is frequently a romantic longing within artists for their work to remain purely personal unsullied by the often crass categorisation of the public. I know this from my own work as an artist. Sekano has achieved fame – his work is to be found in New York as well as Nairobi, and in important museum collections in the States but now approaching seventy he remains the rebel – always at his happiest playing his piano in a darkened nightclub.

One of the visitors to my current show of Sekano's work commented "you can tell the works were done for himself alone" and it's true there is no sense of anything else but the artist and his immortalised subject - often a beautiful young woman in the unforgiving urban African night. Sekano's women are not sentimentalised or even romanticised they portray a stubborn range of human emotion from nostalgia to sulkiness, to maternal instinct to narcissism to pride, ambivalence, coyness and sadness - all depicted with cryptic precision.

View a catalogue of the exhibition

Peterson Kamwathi

2011-01-09T15:46:00.000-08:00

Peterson Kamwathi Untitled Digital Print 650mm x 480mm

This remarkable print by the Kenyan artist, Peterson Kamwathi whom I work with in London, was born of a collaboration with the Kenyan poet Shailja Patel for the South African based project Dialogue Among Civilizations The Art of Human Rights you can read Shailja's poem What we want on this link.

I think Kamwathi's print makes its point with economy and subtlety, demonstrating the strength, beauty and vulnerability of human communities.

There is a very illuminating London article/interview with Kamwathi by Karen Dabrowska which gives a real sense of both the man and his work.

Peterson Kamwathi explaining Kenya through woodcut prints and icons

and we produced a full catalogue of the artist's last show in London with an essay by the SOAS art historian, Elsbeth Court, and an interview with fellow artist Sam Hopkins together with images and details of all the works in the show. Do check it out...

...Matter of Record... Catalogue

Charles Sekano - House of Women

2010-12-30T06:47:00.000-08:00

February 10^th –March 31^st 2011 Talbot Rd, London

Charles Sekano in the 1980s

Born in Sophiatown, Johannesburg in 1945, Sekano’s youth was cruelly overshadowed by the consequences of apartheid. Sophiatown was destroyed by the authorities and his family forced in to tribally segregated districts within Soweto. This process of dislocation lead to the early death of his father and to his decision to flee South Africa and exile himself from the harsh and violent conditions that he found himself in.

It was in Nairobi in the 1960’s, amid the very real isolation of exile that Sekano forged himself in to both self taught artist and musician – and where he worked as a Jazz pianist in the multiracial, bars and nightclubs of this rough edged African metropolis. Here he lived life in the tradition of a romantic bohemian artist and musician, developing his own version of the three Rs – “the three Ps” – Painting, Poetry and Piano. Like Degas and Toulouse Lautrec before him – living amongst his, mostly female, subjects.

His artistic expression was and is informed by the sense of loss experienced after his family were uprooted and by the resultant severing of family bonds. Women, for Sekano, - those that he immortalises in his works - became his world and his artistic language.

In the words of Sekano in an interview from the 1980s:

“The whole idea is a symbolic relationship. Even the theme “Woman” seems to be remembering my mother, my sisters. I’m trying to live on a higher level with them because I have no communication to show that I am attached to them. They are inseparable from me. There is no border. This Woman theme is my landscape. The only piece of property I own. Woman is the only country I have.”

During his years of exile in Nairobi Sekano waged his own passionate war against the apartheid regime with paintbrush and crayon. The fact that he chose to include Caucasian women in his work was a starting point that surprised some of his peers. But for him colour itself began to symbolise freedom.

“I decided to destroy the apartheid in my thoughts by using colour, by breaking the colour bar. So I just fused everything. I made a red woman, I made a blue woman, a green woman.”

Whilst influences of Picasso and Braque’s Cubism , Toulouse-Lautrec’s and Henri Rousseau’s poster art are clear in his work, Sekano has always rooted himself in the realities of cosmopolitan urban Africa and drawn on Egyptian and San Rock art for inspiration. The nightclubs and bars of Kenya with their beautiful female clientele from diverse cultures across Africa were his subject matter and remain his inspiration. These are “spaces” where opportunism and desire intersect and coexist, often in surprising ways. Each work – be it of a single figure, a couple or a group, contains a narrative – keenly and economically observed. The story of the lure of the bright lights and the promise of escape from poverty and pain underlies many of the tableaux. Sekano is never moralistic, always humanistic – his works celebrate and preserve moments.

In 1997 Charles Sekano returned to a newly liberated South Africa with mixed feelings leaving behind a country he had grown to love, and re-entering a society that had largely forgotten him – the fate of many a returning exile.

Apart from two fine works from the late 1980s the paintings in this exhibition have been produced in the last two years and are part of a new body of work which the artist calls “House of Women”. Sekano has become fascinated with a “building block” mosaic style – where the women who have inspired him all his life are constructed from these geometric shapes referencing the notion of home and strength as well as musical notes.

Charles Sekano has exhibited widely in Kenya, Holland and Germany, Japan and the U.S.A., his most recent show was at the University of Pretoria in 2008. His works are in private collections across the world and in various museums including Volkekunde Museum, Frankfurt, and the Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts.

The works in this exhibition are for sale – for further information please contact Ed Cross at Ed Cross Fine Art ed@edcrossfineart.com or visit http://edcrossfineart.com/ for the complete catalogue and pricelist.

Ed Cross Fine Art thanks Simon Russell for his generous support for this exhibition.

Witness: the Spectre of Memory in Contemporary African Art

2010-08-25T09:06:00.000-07:00

Aminatta Forna with curator Ed Cross at WITNESS: the spectre of memory in contemporary African art, in the background a painting by Zimbabwe's Lovemore Kambudzi

What the critics say!

"If you are in Edinburgh go to this show. 23 Atholl Crescent - 5 mins walk from the Book Festival site. It's brilliant".

Aminatta Forna

Author of The Memory of Love, The Devil that Danced on the Water and other titles

"Africa's economy is fast moving out of the doldrums, and a new breed of wealthy would-be art patron is looking around at the bargains on offer.
Bonhams and Philips now have auctions with an Africa theme, and are a good place to start. But if you want friendly expert advice, try Edinburgh, where Ed Cross's Festival exhibition has some magnificent examples of art worth buying...to enjoy, or as an investment, or both.

If you can persuade him to part with a 'not for sale' work by Lovemore Kambudzi you won't regret it, for this is sure to become an African classic.

True, prices seem high for relatively unknown artists - and I reckon it would take 15-20,000 before Ed and the owner might change their mind about a work that dominates the exhibition If they won't budge, buy up the remaining Donkey pieces, (by Peterson Kamwathi) with their sharp social comment and bitter humour.

Price? About £1500 each. In a couple of years they will be seen as a steal."

Michael Holman
Africa editor of the Financial Times 1984-2002
Author of the Fatboy and the Dancing Ladies

Brushes with Memory

2010-08-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

Curating an exhibition in a place away from your regular abode is an experience I am familiar with but one that never fails to excite me. In many ways it is the perfect way to experience a place as you encounter both local people and other visitors in the space that you have staked out.

Witness: the spectre of memory in contemporary African art is my current exhibition here staged by Ed Cross Fine Art Ltd in the beautiful city of Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival. The show is at the English Speaking Union’s pleasant little gallery at 23 Atholl Crescent – in a lovely 18^th century part of the city not far from Princes St. It features five artists – from four African countries: Soly Cisse from Senegal, Lovemore Kambudzi from Zimbabwe, Peterson Kamwathi from Kenya, Richard Onyango also from Kenya, and Dominique Zinkpe from The Republic of Benin. These are all artists I have dealings with – I have selected them because I love their work.

In this large and highly ambitious reduction Woodcut queuing figures from the abortive 2008 Kenyan elections can be made out amid a mass of ballot boxes.

Memory is the theme of the exhibition – its presence is felt in all acts of creation – but I am interested by the specific roles it plays with the five artists represented and here I will write about three of them. Both Peterson Kamwathi and Lovemore Kambudzi have consciously or otherwise assumed the role of guardians of memories for their respective countries Kenya and Zimbabwe. Kamwathi with his thoughtful, beautifully executed and focussed work. Each marking aspirations, disappointments and travesties of justice. His work grounded in his country but expanding out in to the wider world and referring back to the past almost as if he is painstakingly assembling a language with which to explain what it is to be a human or indeed an animal,

in this world of ours which worships at the alter of systems of leverage that deliver power and or wealth to the few usually at the expense of the many. Where corporate, individual or national greed are ever present and the sins of many a father apparent if one looks deep enough. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance – there is vigilance in Kamwathi’s work that would be dogged if it were not beautiful. Existing behind the unflinching record of human failings is a strong belief in the soul, a kernel within humanity in Africa or anywhere on earth, that must be protected, nourished and celebrated.

Lovemore Kambudzi from Harare works from memory and his own sketches – he paints what he sees going on around him – the good, the bad and the ugly, in most cases applying one colour at a time across often large canvasses. In 2008 during one of the lowest points in Zimbabwe’s recent history when water supplies failed, Cholera stalked the country and political oppression was particularly brutal, I suggested that he and his family come to Kenya to take shelter for a while – a few days later the message came from his wife – “Lovemore wouldn’t know what to paint in Kenya – there are some extraordinary things going on– he can’t leave now - he has to keep painting what’s happening”. Kambudzi has only one subject – the living breathing stumbling, tragic but often smiling, Zimbabwe. It’s a circus that he cannot miss – he must not only witness but record – and his recording is detailed and intense - the expressions on the numerous characters that pepper his works are very specific and acutely observed - even the extras in his “cast of thousands” works are individuals, often betraying their emotions through a hunch of the shoulders or the tilt of a hip.

No one would describe Richard Onyango as a political artist, yet whilst his subject matter – mostly his own life both real and imagined, is completely at odds with that of Kamwathi and Kambudzi; his work too, is profoundly informed by politics and social phenomenon. Like Kamwathi, Onyango is driven by a vision of a just Africa. Where people are able to play their part in society and live in dignity. In Onyango’s case it is an extravagant, unfettered Utopian vision. It is a world where very overweight women of all colour (and presumably men too?) can defy gravity and pole-vault majestically through the air or belt round athletics tracks in record time.

It is a place where people are accorded proper respect regardless of their colour or body type – where women are as powerful as men and more than capable of defending themselves if needs be#

(note the pistol on his late girlfriend Drosie’s belt and the sword on his new fantasy lover, Deborah Teighler once dubbed “the fattest woman in America”). It is an anti-obsolescence world where machinery, engineering and vehicles are revered and well maintained in to old age. It is also a place where people are aware that “dreaming” is a creative process – for Onyango believes that people get what they look for in life. You could say the artist is living proof of his belief in the power of the mind as it was his decision as a child to remember everything he saw (in the absence of a camera) that he attributes to his “photographic memory” and the ability to recall childhood scenes with a high degree of accuracy. Others might attribute it to a variety of autism (is this merely a neurotic and tedious need for labels?) but his clear recollection of his own decision to “record what he was interested in” is compelling.

Have a look at the catalogue of the exhibition...

http://www.edcrossfineart.com/ECFA_Catalogue_and_price_list_Witness_the_Spectre_of_Memory.pdf

Contemporary African art in St Louis Senegal

2010-04-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

Anyone heading for Dak'Art 2010 in Dakar , Senegal are warmly invited to come to St Louis to see the show I am putting on there - this is part of the Dak Art Off programme and the St Louis 250 celebrations - it also coincides with The St Louis Jazz Festival which is a jazz festival to die for http://www.saintlouisjazz.com/

Le nord, le sud, l'est et l'ouest
COMPTOIRS DU FLEUVE, ST LOUIS, SENEGAL May 12th-30th 2010
This exhibition brings together works from seven important artists from
Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania

Fathi Hassan – Egypt, Peterson Waweru Kamwathi – Kenya
Jems Robert Koko Bi – Cote D’Ivoire, The Late George Lilanga – Tanzania ,
Richard Onyango – Kenya , Charles Sekano – South Africa/Kenya,
Dominique Zinkpe – Benin

Charles Sekano - Two women – House of Women series – pastels on paper – 2009

This exhibition highlights the rich eclecticism inherent in the African continent and its art. It shows works from artists from seven countries (two of whom live in Europe) across different generations and educational backgrounds with works by the late master – George Lilanga di Nyama from Tanzania.

Fathi Hassan
Fathi Hassan (born 1957) is a Sudanese-Egyptian artist known for his installations involving the written word.
Of Nubian origin, Hassan took his diploma at the Naples Art School in 1984; in 1988 he was selected to represent Africa in the "Aperto '88" section of the Venice Biennale. He has exhibited in numerous galleries in Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Egypt, and New York City. Hassan has lived in Italy since 1979, working between Fano and Milan.
Hassan's work often emphasizes power relations and the relationship between the oral and written word; drawing upon his Nubian heritage, he places particular emphasis on the loss of language under the dominance of empire. Most of his scripts are based upon kufic calligraphy, but remain deliberately illegible and impossible to decipher.

Peterson Waweru Kamwathi
Peterson Kamwathi, born in Nairobi in 1980, is one of Kenya’s best regarded young artists and is now establishing himself as a major name in contemporary African art. His work combines subtle conceptual elements and rich content with technical mastery. His main body of work has been in printmaking where he is an acknowledged master of the woodcut process though more recently he has broadened his oeuvre to create several series of charcoal and mixed media works culminating in his “Sitting Allowance” installation which is almost epic in its scale documenting the grim realities of the bungled Kenyan 2007/8 elections
Kamwathi is participating in the 2010 Dak’art Biennale, he has been shown widely in Nairobi at the Rahimtulla Museum of Modern Art, and the Goethe Institute, Nairobi. He is currently in a residency at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam and will take part in the Museum Africa exhibition - Currencies in Contemporary African Art, Johannesburg in May 2010.

Jems Robert Koko Bi
Jems Robert Koko Bi was born in Cote D’Ivoire in 1966 where he lived and studied until 1997 when he won the DAAD scholarship and commenced his art studies in Germany culminating in his position as master student with Professor Klaus Rinke in 2000.
Koko Bi is principally a sculptor using wood as his medium though it is his extraordinary drawings that are featured in this exhibition. His work is informed by the duality of his own life. He refers to this as a tension between time and space – time represented by the history of his country and continent and the space that he now finds himself occupying as an international contemporary artist – but with Africa and its history following him like a shadow. Koko Bi has been a frequent participant and prize winner at the Dak’Art Biennale.

The Late George Lilanga
George Lilanga (1932-2005 was Tanzanian of Makonde origins began his training as a sculptor in 1961 in Dar-es-Salaam; in 1973 he became associated with the newly founded Nyumba ya Sanaa (House of Arts),.
His playful figures are best understood as heirs to the Makonde shetani, the unruly spirits of Makonde cosmology. Similarly, the complexity of his paintings can be compared to the Makonde ujamaa (tree of life), which signifies unity and solidarity. At the same time, the vibrant inventiveness of Lilanga’s work also testifies to the profound revolution that marked the birth of individualization and personal talent in Africa.

Richard Onyango
Born in Kenya in 1960, Onyango’s work has featured in three major international African exhibitions Africa Now, Africa Remix and Seven Stories about African Art . Onyango’s work hovers between memory and fantasy. Gifted with near perfect recall he is able to remember and reproduce scenes from his childhood and later life in extraordinary detail.
Charles Sekano
Sekano, who is a South African citizen, spent the decades from the 1960s to the 1980s living and working as an artist and Jazz musician in his country of exile, Kenya. An unashamed colourist and admirer of women, he was represented by Ruth Schaffner’s Gallery Watatu until her death. He returned to South Africa after the end of apartheid and sank in to obscurity until his show at the University of Pretoria in 2008. Sekano lives by what he calls “The Three Ps” – Painting, Poetry and Piano.

Dominique Zinkpe
Dominique Zinkpè was born in 1969 in Cotonou in the Republic of Benin. He has participated in numerous exhibitions workshops and residences in Africa, Europe and South America. Zinkpe’s oeuvre is complex and wide ranging, spanning installations, drawings, painting, sculpture and video. There is a restlessness within Zinkpe that prevents him from confining his creative processes to one medium, but his paintings and drawings represent his most intimate work.

Curator: Ed Cross
Ed Cross is an artist, art dealer and curator specialising in contemporary African art. Ed has a Degree in Art History from Cambridge University and now lives and works in London after spending more than twenty years in East Africa working in publishing and the visual arts. His company Ed Cross Fine Art Ltd (www.edcrossfineart.com) promotes and sells a number of the continent’s most important artists.

Contemporary African Art in Edinburgh

2010-03-25T08:06:00.000-07:00

Richard Onyango Heavy Machines in the Garage Acrylic on canvas 2010
Here are some early details on a show we are putting on as part of the Edinburgh Festival

Witness
The spectre of Memory in contemporary African art

ESU – Scotland, 23 Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh EH3 8HQ
August 6th- 30th 2010
10am - 6pm

Kenya’s Richard Onyango can remember scenes from his childhood and more recent past with almost perfect recollection and then paint them in vivid detail. Aside from any innate gift of recall, this practice stems from a conscious decision made as a child when, lacking a camera but inspired by its power, he resolved to use his own mind as a recording device.

The camera is the most obvious recorder of history but in modern Zimbabwe photographers are more vulnerable to harassment than artists. Photography lacks the flexibility of painting, where all the components of a social phenomenon can be incorporated. Lovemore Kambudzi has been evoking the realities of life in Harare for the last ten years. The (decidedly unofficial) equivalent of a western “war artist”, he has emerged as the principal recorder of his country’s fate.

Peterson Waweru Kamwathi’s work is mostly linked to moments in the history of his country, Kenya. These may not be made explicit, but there is a sense in his work of recording history at an oblique angle. His work painstakingly records his country’s political aspirations and their realisation or subversion. And the grave consequences of political failure.

Soly Cisse is haunted by the happy memories of his childhood which seem to seep in to almost every canvas he paints in the shape of wild animals that he hunted in his youth - the animals appearing now to flee from modernity rather than the artist’s youthful pursuit.

For further information contact ed@edcrossfineart.com
Tel:07507067567

New Website and the Bonham's sale...

2010-01-02T10:46:00.000-08:00

I recently launched www.edcrossfineart.com dedicated to the contemporary African artists that I promote - if you haven't already see it - please check it out and send me your feedback. Most of the works on the site are available for sale and can be despatched to you from London wherever you may be.

2010 should be a significant year for Contemporary African Art - and one of the major events on the horizon is Bonham's New York sale which will take place on 10th March at their offices on 580 Madison Avenue, New York City - check their website for further details though the online catalogue is not out at the time of this posting http://www.bonhams.com/cgi-bin/public.sh/pubweb/publicSite.r?sContinent=EUR&screen=newyork . The auction's charity is sponsored by Alicia Keys' Child Alive charity which will ensure major African American celebrity interest. See you there!

Richard Onyango

2009-12-04T10:16:00.000-08:00

I came across this piece by David Kaiza who writes about African art superbly and with inspiration. It appeared originally on the www.africancolours.net site.

I have several of Richard's works for sale in London, one of them is in my current show SEVEN ARTISTS ONE CONTINENT. I plan at some point to put on a solo show for him here.

http://www.edcrossfineart.com/onyango.html
Image courtesy of www.African Colours.net

The Life And Times Of Richard Onyango

A book by Richard Onyango

Reviewed by David Kaiza

The Life and times of Richard Onyango

“It was nearly midnight when I saw her. A woman wearing a cream dress and shoes. She had a unique figure 8 – because she was very big and strong – and she looked at me…she had very fierce eyes. Wow, I said to myself, who is this? She was smiling at me and admiring me so I added some more beats just to make her happy. Then she stood and came towards the stage…”

So Drosie enters Richard Onyango’s life, to be endlessly reproduced in his art, years after her death; her size, her presence and the mystery of her. She enters his life, and through it, into our consciousness.

In this pocket book, the first on the enigmatic Kenyan painter’s life, we wait, almost morbidly, for the first mention of Drosie. This does not come until page 19, but given only as notice, presenting the music-band atmosphere in which he met her. From there, the narrative veers briefly to the circumstance of poverty, drugs, and the twin makings of Onyango’s life - music and art. It is a mere page and a half that separates the notice to the revelation. But your heart beats in the half minute it takes to meet Drosie…

As it were, she is introduced through drum rolls and colour and never leaves even when the book ends.

As if anticipating the questions in the reader’s mind, Onyango introduces her in full – all of that heft, those eyes, that energy and the inscrutable presence that we have now come to wonder at.

‘Wonder at’ is a statement too early. First, his work seers into the consciousness, outrages, intrigues and finally defeats the mind. Acceptance comes much later, and for many, what remains is wonder – whether as admiration or simply wondering (with disturbed questions) what it is all about.

The first time I saw his work, a few years back when it was profiled in The EastAfrican newspaper, I barely read the article for it had elements of what in this region (and beyond) is referred to as ‘naïve’ art – an excretive which is a sad product of colonial/racial history. It was not until 2008 after I had come to Kenya and started coming to terms with its art (mercifully ‘naïve’ is now on the periphery) and understood its circumstances that I again met Onyango’s work.

“Met” does not give it full vent; rather, it met me as no doubt it does all who see it. Onyango’s art forces its way into your consciousness in a way which is probably unfair. Like a mortal insult, an accident or holiday of a lifetime, it stays with you. The sheer mass of Drosie at first seems like a morbid attraction; all that flesh and folds, as if the artist had gone out of his mind and was just trying to shock or in some drug-ridden mood were letting a disgusting, erotic fantasy run loose. Who would want to put a picture like that up unless they too were in a similar frame of mind, after all it begs the question – what is art?

Yet they can’t all be mad. It is after hearing the story of it that one feels guilty about the initial reaction. It is also the fact that the artist has real talent that keeps one going. Like a book that changes the way a reader expects a book to be – a first encounter with magic realism for instance – the disturbance gives way to attentiveness and the beginnings of engagement. But the entry is not easy.

Later you see things from the artist’s perspective, and thence, to begin considering what precisely it is all about. It is a very serious matter, for the artist operates beyond inhibitions, going right to the centre of how art and life have been shaped in this region.

Kwani? founding editor, Binyavanga Wainaina approached Richard Onyango and suggested he write his story. The Life and Times of Richard Onyango is the result. It is a pocket book, only 64 pages and can be read within the hour.

Perhaps it’s a good judgment that it be a booklet for now and mercifully, does not give away the whole story, only giving brief overviews, which for now, remove some of the questions about whether this is art at all.

In it we follow Onyango’s childhood, his family moving over from Western Kenya to the coast. It was not really a life of struggle, and what hardship the young man faced came from choice. His decision to leave home was not dramatic, just renting a house so he could be closer to school.

It was in the routine of waiting for money his father sent him by bus that he started drawing buses. It was Tana River Bus which he first painted and was an instant star with it and the mesmerized company director ordered he travel free - for life. It was not the only ecstatic bus company that would give him this privilege. Not that he really needs it. Fame has brought him a measure of success and among other things, this book tells us Onyango owns 11 Landrovers and has acquired a crane. Whatever for!

Playing the Band by Richard Onyango

The manner in which Drosie practically pulled him off stage into her life, to only keep him as an appendage to her life, has to be read. Onyango does not tell us if there was any intimacy between the two of them although there should have been a lot of it. “Oh Richard, you met a mzungu so you abandoned us,” his band members chide him. Onyango does not tell us about the months that have passed between the time he left the band and attempted running away from Drosie.

Later there would be encounters with Drosie’s parents and the racial tension therein. These tensions are not just between black and white. The black waiters and gatekeepers in the exclusive coastal resorts frown on him showing up. It is the unbelievable, refractive racism that still goes on and which we feel on the wings of Onyango’s paintings.

The harrowing narrative of Drosie’s death comes as something of a shock to someone used to seeing her as a picture model. She is human! In a way, this book is also about the life of Dr. Suzy - Drosie a nickname given her by her mother. In this way, the book remains unfinished, as indeed, Drosie’s presence in Onyango’s life and work.

No one paints like Onyango and by the looks of it, he will remain inimitable. Drosie paintings are still coming. Not one-offs, they are a continuous narrative, like a 19th century novel published piecemeal in periodicals, you want the next installment.

As narrative, his story contains many narrative elements: personal/cultural encounter, soliloquy, biography, colour and landscapes and a lot more.

Hence, they can be interpreted over and over, from all angles – gender, race, history, anthropology, erotica. Is it the emasculation of man in the age of gender equality?

Who is Drosie?

Had she not existed in fact, we might have thought Onyango made her up. Is she embodiment of how our world is divided into a West inordinately powerful, driving, encircling, domineering and too wealthy for its own health? Or is Onyango suggesting that this wealth and power is to the detriment of the West as well as everybody else?

As art, what’s in it – magic-realism, realism, surrealism or just naïve art given rhetorical vent?

He uses symbols extensively, whether they are a bedstead as a spider’s web, a drooping fan in a corner or the wall plaque “I Love Africa”, they all say something, fittingly, seeming to be ordinary appurtenances of daily life, pointing out the lively interweaving of meaning in things we don’t take a second look at.

Art writer, Katrin Bettina Müller says Onyango’s work is a “…parody (of) colonialists´ views, fears and longings. With the figure of Souzy (sic) Drosie, a voluminous English lady, he creates scenes reflecting ironically on the new and uncertain status of the artist,” going to say that his work “…suggest(s) that the luxury of patronising art and artists is part of an extravagant life-style. Art as a ladder to social success presupposes Western conditions. Richard Onyango is pointing out bitterly that market-dependent art is part of a post-colonial heritage. He has also found a formula for the ambivalence of his new identity.”

So many things happen simultaneously in Richard Onyango’s art that each time you come to it, you see something different. In time, it will probably be unaffordable.

Drosie was his girlfriend. Drosie has become his symbol, suggesting that the apparent force of her says less about the real relationship, for Onyango saw and thought about everything.

Yet at the same time, it is not always possible to like Richard Onyango’s work. I sometimes feel outraged by it. I don’t know if it is the kind of work you can like. An essential strain, almost necessary that emerges from Onyango demands that you engage it with the mind rather than the heart, yet it does not crowd out the heart.

At the bottom of the outrage, nags the question about how much a man can put up with, not just because 300 pounds is slammed over him, but because circumstances just keep coming at him. His ability to remain steady through it all probably says something of how much substance Onyango’s got in store.

The fact which ought to stay at the very top is that this man is hugely talented. His colours, his composition and sense of proportion are winning. He is an artist and this fact rounds back to the beginning, to redeem and to re-affirm what first hits you. His talent not only forgives the outrage, but lifts it up from conventional indignation to a height where we see Onyango, not as cultural aberrant but as questioner, a painter of big canvas on which everything appearing, everything is laid on the table.

His talent is clearly present in the book for the people who saw his art, whether the bus company director or the Italian collectors, understood they were in the presence of a real thing.

Edcrossfineart.com

2009-11-29T10:08:00.000-08:00

My Contemporary African Art website is now up and running - it has full details of the SEVEN ARTISTS ONE CONTINENT show that is now on in London - viewings are by private appointment- call me on 07507067567.

http://edcrossfineart.com/index.html

Seven Artists One Continent

2009-11-20T13:58:00.000-08:00

A selection of work on show...

Dominique Zinkpe - Untitled Drawing

Domnique Zinkpe - Untitled Drawing

Dominique Zinkpe - Minuit a Aborney - Oil on Canvas
Richard Lilanga - Mbuni - Acrylic on Canvas
Richard Onyango - Indian Truck - Acrylic on Canvas
George Lilanga - Wacha Hayo Si Mayani - Oil on Board
George Lilanga - Untitled - acrylic on wood
Jems Koko Bi - Parody - Ink on paper
Jems Koko Bi - North Wind - Ink on paper
Peterson Kamwathi - Sitting Allowance - Untitled - (Police) Mixed Media on paper
Lovemore Kambudzi - Mbare Musika
Soly Cisse - Petit Prince - Oil on Canvas

Seven Artists One Continent

African Contemporary Art in London

Contemporary Africa is vibrant, often chaotic, frequently humorous sometimes brutal and dangerous, often charming and compassionate, surprising, refreshing to the often jaundiced Western eye - likewise the art that is being produced in this compelling and paradoxical continent.

This exhibition makes no grand curatorial claims, takes place in a private space in a city that has until recently paid little attention to contemporary African art. But we live in changing times and London, with the rest of the world, is waking up to the fact that Africa has some outstanding contemporary artists. The vibrancy of Africa’s cultures and sensory environments, its relative freedom from the hegemony of global fashions, curatorial elites and standardisation of any kind equates to fertile ground for the development of artistic talent in a continent that has more than its fair share of artists looking for avenues to express themselves and make a difference to their own lives and to the wider world.

Seven Artists One Continent features work by the late George Lilanga from Tanzania and six other artists who with the exception of Jems Koko Bi, who lives in Germany, are living and working on the African continent – from Tanzania to Senegal. Their work reflects the eclecticism that characterises Africa and contemporary African art.

Artists Featured:

SOLY CISSE –Senegal

LOVEMORE KAMBUDZI – Zimbabwe

PETERSON KAMWATHI – Kenya

JEMS KOKO BI – Cote D’Ivoire

GEORGE LILANGA – Tanzania

RICHARD ONYANGO – Kenya

DOMINIQUE ZINKPE – Benin

Seven Artists One Continent (curated by Ed Cross and Rebecca Leathley)

is at 5 Talbot Rd London W25JE

Private View 6.30 pm Thursday 26^th November 2009, thereafter accessible by private appointment only (via Ed Cross on 07507067567).

Enquiries to ed@edcrossfineart.com

Ed Cross Fine Art Ltd

2009-09-26T02:05:00.000-07:00

This is a personal note. I am moving to a flat in an interesting part of North London today after many months of very kind hospitality from various friends and family. Having decided to move back to England after many good years in Africa, I have set up Ed Cross Fine Art Ltd and will be active in the world of contemporary African art. I shall be travelling in Africa quite a bit and to the States and parts of Europe in due course. I shall miss living in Africa hugely but am blessed that I have work that keeps me closely in touch and beloved family and friends there. I am also very excited about the prospects for my company and the artists that I work with.

Ed Cross Fine Art will be putting on a show in Notting Hill in late November/early December - this will be a private exhibition bringing some really strong and compelling contemporary art from Kenya, Benin, Senegal and Cote D'Ivoire.

There will be a certain amount of work on show in my flat in due course and may have other exhibition spaces available to me later - if you are in London or visiting and would like to look at work of the artists that I deal in do please get in touch on 0750 706 7567 or email me on ed.r.cross@gmail.com. There will be an edcrossfineart.com website shortly.

I will from time to time have work available from:

PETERSON KAMWATHI

SOLY CISSE

JEMS KOKO BI

RICHARD ONYANGO

FREDDY TSIMBA

GEORGE LILANGA

MISHECK MASAMVU

LOVEMORE KAMBUDZI

DOMINIQUE ZINKPE

JASON CORDER

Worlds of the Indian Ocean

2009-02-25T22:48:00.000-08:00

My show at the National Museum of Kenya opened last month – this, to make a change, is my own work. I was invited to put on an installation of my sculpture as part of the Aga Khan Worlds of the Indian Ocean conference and festival taking place in Nairobi recently. Over three hundred delegates from all over the Indian Ocean attended this event whose primary purpose is to start dialogues over the curriculum and shape of the Aga Khan Regional University to be opened in Arusha, Tanzania in 2013.

The exhibition features photographs from contemporary Lamu by Abraham Ali to together with an educational exhibit on the carved doors of the Indian Ocean put together by the National Museums of Kenya and Alliance Francaise; and my work – inspired by and using material from the East African coast.

Its not quite as fun writing about your own work as others – but I am pleased with my exhibit – which was a synchronistic coming together – offering a contemporary, imaginative interpretation of the East African coast by, I hope, a respectful and appreciative outsider – along with liberal quantities of beautiful white Diani beach sand.

As I type this I have just witnessed the first major test for the show - an invasion of about sixty small school children thronging round the work – rather like the insects that had besieged the wood earlier, they troop in some on all fours , others scooting along the tiled surface of the newly renovated museum, and are gone. And then silence returns.

My show consists of some older work – and some new pieces that I did specially for the installation. In the newer work I have started to coat some of the pieces in white Diani beach sand as in this work – Kaya Couple.

Kaya’s are the sacred forests of the Mijikenda peoples from the East African coast, recently listed as UNESCO National Heritage. Some may contain some Swahili ruins from several hundred years back but a Kaya is a place in an indigenous coastal forest where the traditional leaders conduct their ceremonies. Shrines may be erected but essentially a Kaya is an area of a forest, places of unique biodiversity and beauty. Some of the canoes that I use in my sculpture will have been carved from trees surrounding the Kayas.

This piece is made from two sides of a dug out canoe found as a ruin in Mombasa, the wood has been beautifully etched and eaten, initially by marine insects and then later by termites in my garden producing undulations and shapes that – evoke tidal sand patterns – I have based on a simple wooden base which is hidden by beach sand. Depending on where it ends up it could either remain like that or could go in to a sealed Perspex box. Essentially the piece represents a man and a woman – the woman is pregnant. The materials may arouse curiosity – the arc of the wood, the origin of the boat from which it came and its unknown history, the men that used it to fish, the countless generations of men before them that used similar boats, the tree that it was made from, the trees that seeded that particular tree and so on – it stretches back in to time. I am excited about the application of sand – its a simple idea and obvious in retrospect – the combining of materials that are central to these boats

One of the larger works –Essences combined - is from the floor of a huge canoe from Nyali (you no longer find boats of this size) that was buried in the sand for many years by its original owner – and here it reincarnated with its sand coating – evoking the beach itself.

Along with the larger wooden works I have included some smaller works in clay with beach sand.

Richard Onyango's Homage to the African Vehicle

2009-01-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

I had a show in Lamu in August 08 which featured twelve artists from across Africa, among them Kenya's internationally acclaimed Richard Onyango. Richard of the same ethnic group as Barrack Obama's Kenyan father which may bring him to the world's attention but he deserves to be there anyway. One of the centre pieces was his painting of a bus - this one - featured below - unusually desolate - the bus irredeemably stuck in the mud; the burnt out trees in the background. Onyango paints entirely from his memory, I am not sure if any other artist has ever worked the way he works... in this painting, for example, he goes back to when he was nine years old to retrieve the image of this particular bus that he had travelled on with his father did eventually break down and which they abandoned in favour of a pick up truck to a nearby town (where Richard was narly killed by a snake!). Bizarrely Onyango recently met the driver of the very same bus - now an old man living near to him in Malindi - who was able to point out a number of innacuracies in the painting ! Extraordinary.

Another work in the show was a painting of the Titanic - spelt in this case " Taitanic" don't know if this is a deliberate misspelling or not - probably not - leaving Southampton on its fateful voyage on April 10th, 1912. Interestingly the passengers appear to be mostly Muslim women in veils. Richard says they are dressed in period costume, but they look very coastal Kenyan to me. He tells a story about when he was painting this his first painting of the Titanic, working through the night as he often does, listening to the BBC on the television in the house where he stays, suddenly to his amazement, there is an interview with the last surviving passenger from the Titanic who as a tiny baby was lowered down the side of the boat in a basket.

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/heritage/titanic/titanic_archives/3760178.Last_Titanic_survivor_to_sell_off_treasures_to_pay_for_nursing_care/

Both works seemed to capture and anticipate the mood of both Kenya's uncertain recovery from the nightmares of the elections and the dire global situation ahead of financial, ice cap and terrorist meltdowns. Indeed little do we know last August how bad things would get - but Richard Onyango is no ordinary artist. All of this was set in Gallery Baraka which is itself a decommissioned Ismaeli mosque.

Sylvia De lap my friend, musician, artist, organic gardener and astrologer was also in the Lamu show and it was she that coined the phrase about Onyango's work that has stuck in my mind. "He has a great feeling for vehicles" she said.

And indeed he has - the African bus - loved, feared by cyclists, nervous passengers and small cars, reviled when they crash devastatingly which they frequently do, admired by small boys, the kings of the road. The bringers of life to the rural areas, with their extravagant horns, delivering people young old, pregnant, sick and healthy,chickens, food, post, products.

The african truck - where every journey is a safari and an adventure with unknown possibilities - breakdowns, stickings in the mud, accidents,robberies, sexual liaisons and disease,even death, friendship, companionship, humour and excitement.

The African ferry - the one pictured below is the Likoni ferry which normally work quite well but on occasions drifts horrifyingly towards the ocean as all engines fail whilst the largely non swimming passengers wail

The African train - this one the Mombasa Nairobi train, sold a few years back to a South African corporation who appear to have run it further in to the ground - but what a journey and what a train and what memories it holds for people of all walks of life that have used it over the years. I used to go up and down on it regularly - knew every steward on the train, used to shake and rattle through vegetable soup in the fading grandeur of the first class dining room while the ancient fans rotated with ponderous dignity above and the Train Captain dspensed good cheer to tourists many of whom wound up with vegetable soups in their laps.

The 2008 Dakar Biennale in perspective

2009-01-17T02:31:00.000-08:00

Not part of the official 2008 Dakar Biennale but but a walking art installation nevertheless - I bought three dolls as modelling fee.

This blog has fallen embarrassingly fallow of late – however this is a new year with new resolutions and on we plough… well where was I? I went to the Dakar Biennale in – when was it – months ago ( – what a city! What a country! The music! The art ! God, I love the music – and I have to detour here on this right away – on the last night I was in Dakar I went to my then newly adopted music haunt – JUST FOR YOU – hardly anyone speaks English in Dakar and so it is quaint that this wonderful venue has a (heavily accented) English name. Now, there you see, it want that difficult to re-start this blog was it Ed? – come on – keep on! They love it! – all that self deprecating twaddle – that diffident banter mixed with penetrating aesthetic revelations. Carlou B performing in London with Youssou N'Dor at Dudu Sarr's launch of Carlou
Back to the music – not the subject of this blog – but never mind. This particular night I had to pay to get in – I was expecting a repeat of the excellent band I had seen there on the same night the previous week but the slightly gruff ticket seller assured me that this band was “Rap”. This trimmed my sails a bit. Calou B was the act and true he had started out as a rapper – or a hip hop poet – and his music all the better for it one suspects - but then has gone on to many other things including writing an opera and incorporating contemporary African sounds with traditional Senagalese instruments and a voice that I rather tritely dubbed a “male African Joan Armatrading”. After the set I went up to meet him and he informed me that his manager Dudu Sarr was due in Nairobi that weekend – I duly met the charming and interesting Dudu who, strangely enough, used to own a contemporary African Art gallery in London until 9/11 somehow knocked him out of the market. Since then Dudu has launched
Carlou B in London with Yousso N’Dor as guest singer– to a rapturous reception and with Peter Gabriel,amongst others, in attendance. Keep an eye out for Carlou B…

Ok, back to visual art. Well the Dakar Biennale is notoriously chaotic and when I asked the organizers for the contacts for Freddy Tsimba , one of the major artists at the show and they googled for the information (and swivelled the flat screen monitor towards me) I began to think that this might be a conspiracy to keep Anglo Saxons out of it leaving smooth French dealers in total control. Well – no it’s not like that. Noone is in control and it’s a lot of fun though it has to be said that this Biennale was considerably scaled down from previous ones – no outside curator in chief, and some of the artist being told they could not bring the pieces they wanted because of financial/logistics considerations. I suspect it’s a classic case of resting on laurels and government underperformance. I met Romuald Hazoume in Porto Novo Benin and he was scathing about it – I thought perhaps a bit too scathing. But many artists have had terrible experiences there – including one that I know of (Mishek Masamvu from Zimbabwe) who is still waiting for the return of his work from about five years ago. Hazoume said one year he told the organizers he was putting on an installation which consisted of him in a fishing boat fishing off the coast of Dakar. Anyway, the president of Senegal opened the Biennale and spoke with considerable passion about things that my inadequate grasp of French suggested were about the central importance of culture in the modern African state – something I couldn’t quite see President Kibaki from Kenya managing. But Hey! this is West Africa, a different ball game. Where the dancers (in Senegal, at any rate) jump like birds and the music is unfailingly brilliant and where jet black skin is rightly coveted. Outdoor pool, Dakar style

Man and beast in perfect harmony, Dakar
For those who know East Africa – I would describe Dakar as a giant Malindi without the Italians. But the place is awash with baguette and croissant – which one can see being pushed down the road in carts of a morning.

And the French Institute, with its sand on the floor of the bar and massive Baobab Tree, art installations in the gardens and constant Jazz – is about the coolest place on earth – hats off to the French. One could never describe the British council as sexy could one? Unless James Bond was in there undercover – neither Gordon Brown, come to that – Blair was our sex symbol – God help us Brits. I digress again. Thatcher? Stop it. Now Cameron… smooth talking Old Etonian – what can I say? Well a friend of mine called him a twatt. Another friend of mine knows him and says he is much to nice to be the PM – nice twatt? Can I be sued for this?

the French Cultural Institute's Bar in Dakar, so much more chic than British Council's reference libraries with their dry descriptions of the University of Hull's student recareation facilities and hefty overseas student fees.

Right. I am months late reporting on the Biennale (help! when is the next one?) and would not have anyway attempted a survey of it – but I will just highlight some of the artists that I met and whose work I loved. Freddy Tsimba whose work is shown beneath….
Detail from Freddy Tsimba's breathtaking installation thatv was on show at Dakar - Freddy plans to produce over a hundred of these ten foot high figures - Dakar organizers had to curtail his plans for a larger installation due to financial constraints last year.

Freddy enjoying the sounds at Just for You - note the trademark Congolese sharp dressing embroidered jacket- atleast as cool as the French Cultural Institue Bar.
is prolific, based Kinshasa and works mostly with spoons and bullets. Ten foot high figures, mostly pregnant women, deformed but in a sort of ruined way so not at all grotesque. Freddy trained at the art school in Kinshasa but then went on to work alongside welding artisans in the city where he perfected his welding skills. The figures themselves are often made of spoons beautifully welded together draped in free hanging suggestions of clothes constructed from bullets. Startling, beautiful and frightening.

James Kokobi from Cote D’ivoire but now based in Germany. Another star of the neglected contemporary African art world. His sculpture installation entitled Darfur was I though one of the best works in the Biennale.

Carved from burnt wood with great sensitivity playing on the notion of , again , ruination, with the figures hollowed out like devastated tree trunks. Beautiful and powerful work. Kokobi also produces wonderful two dimensional work – some of it using coffee as the pigment.

From Dakar I zipped off to Cotonou principally to go and find Gerard Quenum . I had never been to Benin before and expected a sort of scaled down Nigeria. I have not yet made it to Nigeria though it seems that Benin is a vastly more mellow than its neighbour. The old colonial hotel I had selected from my Rough Guide was under renovation and my taxi driver took me to another new hotel (The Acropole) which he assured me would be to my liking, as indeed it was. I set off through the dusty but very peaceful streets to get a sim card the next morning and discovered “Tchif” who was on my list of artists to meet had a studio round the corner. Tchif greeted me in his studio luxuriant in boxer shorts and entourage of hangers on with a computer screen and internet connection in the middle of the floor surrounded by copious art books and magazines featuring his very interesting work. Tchif meanwhile continued working on the floor pushing colour about and revelling in his semi abstract cave painting /google earth work whilst kindly organizing my itineraray for the next few days. Soon we were in Tchifs leather seated four wheel drive mercedes bombing down the road in the usual sea of motorbikes like a big fast fish among minnows.

Smaller work for Tchiff that I have for sale. Tchif at work in his studio a la boxer shorts

Dominique Zinpke and Francis Tchiakpe Tchif are best mates – same age – equally successful. Tchif is the dashing artist with a touch of Bling and Dominique more the woolly liberal – not woolly in his thinking though, at all. It sounds a bit naff to say I have become friends– but –sorry we are now friends. Its one of the perks of my job - one gets to make friends with artists.

Zinpke is prolific and wide ranging in his work ,some would say, to a fault. His paintings are fascinating, extremely intense, precise, Baconesque, almost flow diagram-like explorations of issues from his romantic/sexual life to concepts such as animism which of course dominates Benin culture. I find them fascinating and powerful. This is the work he does alone at home and some say it is his best. His studio is a riot of activity – where he is to be found working on minibus installations with wooden figures festooned in recycled beer can clothes or wooden figures commissioned by the President of Benin but nevertheless containing one of Zinpke’s central themes the reality of big men existing on the backs, or even the heads,of the common man.

I will write soon, I hope, about my meeting with the Romuald Hazoume which was a great honour and extremely interesting.

Gerard Quenum, I saw in the end. Tchiff took me to see him this time with his charming wife at the wheel in her wonderful Benin cloth outfit – Tchiff, chauffered, and lolling in the front seat in his finery– something that no Kenyan man – black or white would normally go for unless they were at death’s door or too drunk to sit upright, but West Africa is different.

Quenum’s studio is on the outskirts of Porto Novo the capital, literally on the edge of the city. His neighbours farming, pigs I seem to remember. Bits of old junk lying around, people scratching a living, and Gerard , whose work had just been in The Financial Times tipped as an up and coming African artist was to be found working on his highly colourful almost childlike canvasses surrounded by his more famous sculptural constructions based mostly on abandoned dolls heads and bodies. Having seen his work in the rarified atmosphere of the October Gallery in London it was interesting seeing it in its natural habitat where the neighbours abandoned scooter or kids toy is either a piece of typical African detritus or, in the hands of a visionary like Quenum, a profound and indeed valuable piece of art. I wondered quite what the neighbours make of him.

Oh and by the way my website is up and running – it’s a start and I hope to expand it greatly in the coming months. Welcome.....

www.africanworks.co.uk

A very Happy New Year to all my very patient readers and if you enjoy reading my work please bully me in to more regular postings – bullying and also any requests for further information about work from the artists I am involved with can be directed to
ed@africanworks.co.uk or ed.r.cross@gmail.com

On the contemporary art trail

2008-04-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

have not yet mastered the layout of this blog - so please forgive me - the first photograph is a view from the amazing Emerson Blue Hotel which will be opening later in the year, in Zanzibar. Second image is an old lady in Zanzibar, third shows sculpture by George Lilanga and the fourth is the Coffe Machine in the bar at the wonderful, historic and friendly Taitu Hotel, Addis Abeba, those looking for luxury should look elsewhere.

I apologise for the gap in the service…I have been busy travelling and, I have to say, having a most interesting time. Many of you know East Africa – for those who don’t – I thoroughly recommend it – especially Zanzibar and Addis Abeba. The spelling of the latter is correct, Ababa being meaningless baby talk introduced by some European or other – at least I think that’s the case.

I am so far behind in my reports about individual artists that I thought I would do a ramble about my travels and artists that I have come to know about. I hope to go back and feature some of the main artists here in more detail when I have time.

Starting in Zanzibar I went to meet Anita Sita of the Real Art Gallery in Stone Town, Zanzibar. Anita has a serious collection of work by the renowned Tanzanian artist George Lilanga and she and her husband used to buy work from him in the last years of his life. She also has good collections of Makonde sculpture and other contemporary art from Tanzania and Uganda. I was surprised to find that Anita is only 28 years old and intrigued to learn that her late father was from the Makonde tribe. Her gallery is well worth a visit if you ever go to Zanzibar, which is, it has to be said, one of the most charming places on earth. Beneath are some of the wooden sculptures by George Lilanga that I have recently bought for the Daraja Collection in London.

I have spent the last three weeks in Addis Abeba. This has caused jealousy amongst friends and colleagues. My complaints about the air pollution in Addis – which combined with the altitude makes life slightly uncomfortable – fell on deaf ears.

I first came to Addis in about 1993 just after the loathed Mengistu was ousted and went off to become Robert Mugabe’s personal advisor. I went on behalf of an aggressive book supply company who had head hunted me as the man to get them a library supply contract in Addis – am I rambling? – I had just given up smoking which slightly spoiled the fun of staying at the Hilton on expenses. I remember good looking Ethiopian families luxuriating by the pool while most outside the Hilton had distinctly lean and hungry looks. I have no idea what happened re the contract – mine was a luxurious courtesy call. The book company eventually went bust owing publishers a million pounds.

Addis then, seemed pretty deserted. Dotted with little blue pickups converted in to buses playing tinkling Ethiopian music, with polite passengers and no hint of Kenyan style crotch-in-your- face overcrowding. The women were, and of course still are, extraordinarily beautiful and charming – and are not in the least bit afraid to receive and give smiles. On my first trip I met a young man on the street who was desperate to get out of Ethiopia as he said young people were being press ganged in to the army, he showed me round Addis and I remember his pleasant demeanour. I remember a rather quiet city, largely bereft of young people, slowly awaking after years of the Derg.

Addis today is in the throws of massive, some would say brutal, change as major road building projects plough through this very large and rather grand city in all directions – all built by the Chinese. There is an unbelievable amount of building going on. On one side of Addis – geography never my strong point – there is a vast new housing area covering what was grazing ground before for miles – the scale of it reminds me of Dubai’s extravagant and surreal development. I heard that the Mayor of Addis has a plan to turn his city in to a new Dubai…when I ask Ethiopian friends where all the money is coming from – is it the Diaspora? 500,000 Ethiopians living in Washington state – something like that anyway – is it “the Americans”? Is it China? Is it the World Bank? Is it – and I must be careful what I say here – Blogspot is banned in Ethiopia because of politically critical blogs - is it, lets just say, ill gotten gains? No one has a clue! Some think that there is far too much building going on and that there will be a glut of office and residential properties. I don’t know. What I do know is that many of the beautiful old buildings that have not been pulled down illegally are being boxed in by high-rise blocks, which is sad. And I know that very few diesel-engined vehicles are properly serviced so that smoke enthusiastically belches from most of them. And as a result the parking girls as the parking ticket girl are known, wear shawls across their face making them look like friendly terrorists.

After that vaguely critical ramble I shall balance things by mentioning that Ethiopia is known as a good implementer of government programmes. There is real civic pride there which is rare in the rest of East Africa – and this ensures that projects whether they be school or road building do get carried out, and for all my dislike of roads – good or bad - and pollution, I salute that determination and discipline.

And now to art….

The Ethiopian art scene is extremely interesting. There is a wealth of talent working both inside Ethiopia and in the Diaspora. Julie Mehretu – who was born in Addis in 1970 but has not lived there since childhood, being Ethiopia’s biggest global “player” as I am tempted to refer to global artists, as. She is exhibited by the White Cube in London, she is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship $500,000 “Genius Grant” – more on this later. Her work is extraordinary.

Skunder (Alexander Boghossian) , who died recently, is recognised as the father of Ethiopian modernism – his work is contemporary, yet steeped in rich and ancient Ethiopian traditions of symbolism and Talismanic art. He left Ethiopia before the Derge and never returned – creating a focus for Ethiopian artists in the USA. His cousin Wosene Kosrof is still very active in the USA, and is just about to have a show with Bill Karg at the Gallery of Contemporary African Art, New York http://www.contempafricanart.com/ . There are numerous and excellent Ethiopian artists working in the Diaspora – one of these is Mickhael Betthe Selassie whom I was lucky enough to meet at the Asni Gallery in Addis on a short trip home. Mickhael trained originally as a scientist in Paris before discovering his vocation as artist and sculptor. He has lived and worked in Paris ever since, producing extremely individualistic pieces of art – mostly in the form of papier-mâché sculpture.

Mickhael Betthe Selassie outside Gallery Asni and one of his small paintings

There are two main contemporary art spaces in Addis currently - the well established Asni Gallery run by Konjit Seyum and the much newer Gallery Lela owned by Lilly Sahle with Leo Lefort as curator. Both are very impressive (both spaces and people!) and have regular interesting shows - whilst I was there Daniel Taye exhibited at Gallery Lela with powerful new work as well as some older paintings. Taye is a painter's painter - very much a Bohemian as his studio suggests - see below Lilly and Daniel in Daniel's studio. The only concern I have about Daniel is the clear evidence of influence from many of the great European artists - Rembrandt, Van Gogh (both of whom he openly parodies) and others, not that I think that African artists should not derive inspiration from Western artists should they wish to do so - but I get the feeling that Daniel's own style has yet to fully emerge - that will be hotly disputed by some -but it's my opinion - in a way its very exciting because as the slogan on the back of many a truck in Kenya goes - "The best is yet to come".

There is much to be said about both galleries - but time limitations mean that I have to summarise by saying that Addis now has real infrastructure for contemporary art thanks to the dedication of a number of key people.

I was introduced to Meskerem Assegued, the respected African curator and anthropologist, and Elias Sime the artist with whom she has been working with for many years. Elias’s show “What is Love?” – opened at the Alliance Francaise, Addis Abeba the week after I arrived. The distinguished American Theatre and arts Director and film maker, Peter Sellars (interestingly, also a recipient of the Macarthur Fellowship) had arrived in Addis especially to get a preview of Elias’s show – Elias had worked with him in 2006 at the New Crowned Hope Festival, part of “Mozart’s Vienna”. Sellars was ecstatic about Sime’s work – indeed he went down on his knees to him in the exhibition hall! Elias is a modest man of few words, his English is not particularly good, unmarried, childless – utterly dedicated to his art.

His show is extraordinary. Comprising of an installation made up of 107 stuffed goatskins most of these intricately embroidered, and 21 two dimensional works. These made from cotton stitched on canvas and in some cases, flattened bottle tops and toys. Apart from attending exhibitions in the U.S.A. and Vienna, Elias has never lived outside Ethiopia. His work is extraordinarily detailed and labour intensive and amazingly, unlike many other artists, he does all the handwork himself. When you look at his intricately stitched canvasses – one could be reminded of an epic poem masterpiece – not one stitch is out of place. Though not at all loquacious, Elias talks interestingly about his work - I’ll give you an example – the work below – which I don’t yet have a title for but which was produced a number of year ago.

I spoke to Elias about it,
“Is this street kid?” I asked
He replied along these lines:
“ Sometimes life doesn’t got the way you planned.
You see the young man has a jacket on but it’s the wrong way round.
He is fighting to turn his life around.
I am saying that you can turn your life around – it is possible.
He is on the process of doing that.”

I believe that Elias has been very fortunate to collaborate with the sensitive and culturally knowledgeable Meskerem Assegued. There is a gap in the African contemporary art world – certainly in East Africa – for curators of her standing. And here is an extraordinary artist who has been able to flourish on his own ground, in his own rich culture, with professional curatorial input. Wonderful!

Elias’s work can be seen in the Studio Museum, Harlem, New York, http://www.studiomuseum.org/ where he is part of the FLOW exhibition of contemporary African art.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/arts/design/04flow.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1207990953-cluGZsw%206XUwiVs7wvH8fw
There are plans to take his latest show, to both Paris and New York. It seems that we will be hearing much more of the remarkable Elias Sime.

See also:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Continuity+and+change:+three+generations+of+Ethiopian+artists.-a0165575757

Charles Sekano and the Food Of Love

2008-02-07T01:51:00.001-08:00

Amongst my ancestors I have a long line of English country parsons, writing this blog begins to remind me of the weekly sermon where the hapless pastor struggles to reconcile personal events of the week with biblical passages.

I don’t wish to stray too far from the topic of this blog, but parson-like, I may work in some extraneous material. And for better or for worse, there is no one to stop me.

Last night I went to a good friend’s family gathering. My friend is a “Kenyan Asian” from a liberal Muslim family. The occasion was his nephew’s twenty second birthday. It was the first time I had met his extended family and we gathered at a Taiwanese Restaurant in Westlands, Nairobi. This is in itself a typical urban Kenyan situation – third and fourth generation Kenyan Asians gathering in a more recent immigrants’ restaurant.

The food and service was excellent but what was even better was the good humour and teasing that went on during the meal, amid the customary friendliness of the Kenyan waiters. Then came the cake and a small but beautiful ceremony from my friend’s brother in law to his son – blessing him and inviting blessings from all present. This ended in a gentle chorus of Amen or was it Amin? (in truth I think a sort of universal mixture of both). This was followed by the young man being fed the cake by all of us in turn with a fork – again a serious gesture but not without the inevitable application of cream to the cheeks by some of his cheekier siblings.

This of course has nothing much to do with Charles Sekano, a South African jazz musician and artist who lived in Kenya during the eighties and nineties in exile from his, then apartheid, home country. Except, and there are always connections to be made, Sekano, like my Kenyan Asian friends, and no doubt the Taiwanese restauranteur and family, had made a home away from his original home in this most hospitable of countries.

I have not yet found much information about Charles, who is now back in South Africa. My friend, Mary Collis, founder of the Ramoma Gallery, tells me that he loves women. This comes as no surprise when one looks at his work, which is almost exclusively dominated by beautiful women and music. I know that he is a Jazz musician, a pianist and I believe, a saxophonist – if anyone, including the man himself, has more information I would love to receive it. What I do know is that his work is superb. Unpretentious, sure footed, if you will pardon the metaphor, and important in its way. It documents the era of the eighties and nineties in Nairobi, in a Kenya in the grip of Moi’s tyranny, but nevertheless a place where anyone who wasn’t an avowed enemy of state and who had enough Kenya shillings in their pocket, could enjoy the glittering prizes of a truly multiracial Nairobi at night. In a city, partly known for its squalor and crime, redeemed for many by its nightlife.

For me, Charles Sekano is one of those rare artists who has what one might call effortless talent. I can imagine him working quickly and without fuss, and never failing to catch the specific expressions and moods of his subjects and scenes.

You can find his work in the Contemporary African Art Gallery in New York http://www.contempafricanart.com/ and it is in major collections in Europe and elsewhere. Charles Sekano was one of Gallery Watatu’s Ruth Schaffner’s key artists. Collectors and art lovers should take note.

As always happy to hear from anyone who might want to collect Charles Sekano and any of the artists featured on this blog. Also, any comments always welcome.

www.ed.r.cross@gmail.com

Art in Crisis

2008-01-31T04:38:00.001-08:00

Art in Crisis

The crisis in Kenya hangs over the country like smog. Some have lost their lives others their loved ones and homes, even privileged non-Kenyans like me, so far physically unaffected by the crisis, feel the psychological weight of a country we love that seems, at times, to be to be sleep walking towards an abyss. But there are signs that the “silent majority” are beginning to awake and force their politicians to deal with the crisis before it gets completely out of control. Caroline Mutoko an FM DJ from Kiss Fm in Nairobi with her comedian partner presenter "Nyambane" have been wrestling tirelessly with politicians on air, exhorting them and her fellow countrymen to stand up for peace and the ethos of “co-existence” which, despite the horrific acts of hooligan and incited youth, is still at the core of the Kenya that many of us know and love. Caroline Mutoko’s efforts are quite extraordinary and I salute her for her huge courage, heart and strength of character.

When I got to Nairobi about two weeks ago I didn’t expect to find artists already responding to recent tragic events, but believe me, they are. The work of two painters in particular, moved me.

John Kamicha

John is a highly creative and sensitive young man, in happier times known for his whacky sense of humour. The son of well known artist Zachariah Mbuthia, he has been raised in an atmosphere of art. Those familiar with his work can see a crystallisation of his talents over the last year and his recent work is very exciting. Last year Kamicha did a series of works using khangas (women’s traditional wraps) as canvas. Painting and drawing around the traditional motifs on the material, bringing the act of painting closer to his own culture and experience. Since then he has reverted to canvas but both uses pieces of Khanga on his works or uses the Khanga design format as his structure hence in this painting.

Mr Bodyguard, who will guard the Bodyguard?

we see the newly and controversially elected President of Kenya in the centre of the painting where a flower would normally reside in a Khanga design; and his security operatives, frieze like, in a border around the painting. Kamicha has seized on the now ubiquitous image of an African president flanked by his army officer. Human figures reflected in his glasses – possibly his advisors. The common people, tiny at his feet, queue patiently at a polling station. Bananas, the symbol of Kibaki’s unsuccessful constitution referendum campaign, ludicrously frame his head. The controversial Election result “certificate” he clutches firmly in his hand.

Mr Bodyguard. Who will Guard the Bodyguard?- John Kamicha - Acrylic on Canvas

In “Poor Women Carrying Empty Baskets” Kamicha could not be clearer. It is the innocent who are suffering in this chaos. Again, the Khanga is present. The uniquely East African wrap worn by women rich and poor, but mostly the poor – originally from the coast but embraced by women of all tribes in Kenya – worn on the head, round the waist, used to carry babies on the back, the elemental, thoroughly useful, inexpensive, and locally designed if not always manufactured, much loved piece of cloth. As I write this it dawns on me why Kamicha has used the Khanga – it is because it symbolises something deep in Kenya and Africa. It is timeless, practical and beautiful. So this is not some whim of the artist – this is heartfelt.

One could go further and say that the Swahili culture (one of the world’s earliest mixed race civilisations) which invented the Khanga, is the foundation for the national ethos of peaceful co-existence. So the Khanga is in a real sense more of a national flag than the Kenya national flag itself, the latter complete with its spears and shields.

In this painting two women carry their empty baskets. Children, vulnerable and abandoned, look up expectantly for sustenance and guidance. Scenes of destruction are taking place on the left of the figures and on the far left, a European man with spirals on his glasses, indicating inevitable confusion of vision, represents an election observer, with his camera dangling uselessly by his side. On the right hand side is a carved ritual figure often present in Kamicha’s work.

Poor Women Carrying Empty Baskets - John Kamicha - Acrylic on Canvas

John Kamicha’s work features in THE WAY WE LIKE IT Current Trends in the Visual Arts Scene - an artists’ initiative to raise money for the Displaced People, at Nairobi’s Village Market, curated by Xavier Verhost, in collaboration with Ramoma Gallery, sponsored by Commercial Bank of Africa. The Exhibition closes on Febuary 3^rd,2008.

Charles Ngatia

Charles is an entirely self taught young artist from a poor background who came to Nairobi as a runaway teenager and who was saved from what would probably have been a life of dissipation through his participation in arts and drama workshops in the slums where he was living. After surviving as a scrap recycler - he trained and worked a mechanic before becoming a full time artist.

I get the sense from Charles that art is his way out of the ghetto – both as a process of self realisation and expression, and as a career. And there is something refreshing about his view of his work, there is no distinction between self advancement and the advancement of humanity, his art is concerned with both.

Charles works humbly in a corner of the communal studio at the Go Down Arts Centre in the industrial area of Nairobi. I had met him before and glossed over his work, which is naïve but very adventurous in its use of materials. As I walked past the studio I caught sight of some interesting painted scrap constructions outside, these turned out to be Ngatia’s, which lead me to him and his paintings. Inside I found him working on what he calls his “slums series”. On the wall behind him was this untitled painting, still wet.

Untitled (Slums series) Charles Ngatia - Oil on Canvas

Ngatia had been working on the slums series since before the election violence and one can see the effect of the chaos on his work, with this predominantly black and red painting. With its many compartment of violent scenes muddled in with every day life still going on but threatened, as in the children in the school. Everyday life, painful enough as it is, represented by the Rent Deadline is 5^th

Pain Agency. Meanwhile the streets run with blood as people are chased in to buildings and property burnt. If you strain your eyes you might just be able to make out (I am sorry this photograph isn’t as good as it should be) an abandoned pair of flip-flops at the foot of the painting.

Ngatia’s use of language is deliberately funny and part of his appeal.

In this untitled work we find the intriguing “Small Demon Church” and the chilling “Domestic Violence Pub”. Here, and elsewhere, he introduces corrugated cardboard on to the canvas to suggest “Mabati” the ubiquitous corrugated iron sheets. Ngatia’s “Innocent Children Going to School” caption unconsciously echoes the Congolese master, Cheri Samba’s work who has evolved a style where the moral message of the painting from his war torn country is so important that he spells it out in large capital letters.

If you are interested in work from either of these artists drop me an email on ed.r.cross@gmail.com

Appeal for Help

If anyone would like to donate some money to help the 300,000 internally displaced people in Kenya (many of whom are children) with bedding and food etc please email Carol Lees of Ramoma Gallery, Nairobi who is coordinating a project for the distribution of aid to those in need.

Carol Lees : oneoff@africaonline.co.ke

Carol will advise on how you can send money and what it will be spent on. To put this in perspective, James Mbuthia an established artist who works for Carol at Ramoma Gallery currently has 30 displaced people camped in his garden.

Most of us believe that Kenya will pull through and that her qualities of compassion, pragmatism and good humour will prevail, lets all pray for that in what ever way we pray.

Kenya, Zimbabwe and the spirit of artists

2008-01-08T09:05:00.000-08:00

Peterson Kamwathi - Charcoal on Paper Jacob Wachira Ezigbo (Kenya) Oil on Canvas

It’s been a sad and grim last few weeks in Kenya though there are many signs of hope. Strange for me as I was in Zimbabwe until about ten days before the election, a country where a coffee cost over a million Zim Dollars and people could not get access to any cash with huge queues outside banks and a withdrawal limit of 10 million Zim dollars per day. I was fairly bullish about Kenya, putting aside any worries from watching opposition campaign rallies in Lamu, where youth had charged around brandishing sticks and looking like they might do some damage if they lost. Interestingly, my daughter went to an opposition party in Lamu just before the election and her friend there gleefully mentioned that they would burn down houses if they lost the election – mercifully that hasn’t happened in Lamu where people are generally very peaceful, but as you will know the Rift Valley is another story all together.

Kenya’s media has been extraordinary throughout all this chaos and violence, they have been united in their continuous and vigorous calls for peace, in fact a friend has suggested that – if peace does prevail in Kenya - that the Kenyan media as a whole be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. As the days pass politicians from both sides of the divide look increasingly selfish and incapable and are, I think, viewed with increasing contempt by many people. It used to be the case under Moi that most people disliked politics – for better or for worse Kenya’s new infatuation with democracy has caught a cold. Looking back, given the ethnic makeup for

Kenya multi party politics Western style has been a recipe for disaster, am not advocating a return to dictatorship but questions should be asked about this model’s suitability to countries like Kenya where ethnicity is a major factor and whose boundaries were draw with rulers wielded by British civil servants.

What has all this got to do with contemporary art? A great deal, actually. Art of all kinds can be a mirror in which societies can observe themselves and promote breakthroughs on thought and feeling. You only have to turn on the television in Kenya to find groups singing peace songs for their country and Eric Wainaina’s song about his country become a second National Anthem.

Artists here have influence. (and unlike the West their messages are not compromised by great affluence) Visual artists are usually less powerful than performers, but nevertheless they make a crucial contribution – especially in Zimbabwe where performance that is critical to the regime is not normally allowed; leaving visual artists, viewed by the authorities as the lunatic fringe, to take up the fight against injustice. There is much that I would like to say about Zimbabwe but in the interests of my continuing visits there and especially in the interest of the artists themselves, discretion will, at least for the time being, be the better part of valour.
.

I came back from Harare convinced that the most important work to collect there was that which reflected historic contemporary issues. I bought, through Gallery Delta, fourteen small works by Cosmos Shirizinomwa which effectively document the notorious Murambatsvina “operation clean up” in which thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed after the 2002 elections– in most case by their owners under threat of the military. This operation which went on all over Zimbabwe delivered a body blow the morale of the people from which they have yet to recover.

I also bought these two wonderful pieces by Munyaradzi Mazarire a young mixed media artist whose I had noticed before and who is still a student. He is among several compelling young artists shown by Gallery Delta, among others are Tafadzwa Getai, and Admire Kamudzengerere. I shall write more about these artists in due course.

Mazarire’s work speaks for itself the Perspective with Ladder work is one of a series of ladder pieces, as is Exercise 10 feet which to me speaks of a recently prized education system going to waste in contemporary Zimbabwe – the work, devoid of people, the complex equation on the blackboard rendered useless, the legs of the chairs and desk, like most of the population, left dangling.
Munyaradzi Mazarire ( Zimbabwe )- Exercise 10 feet - Mixed Media - 48 x 53cm

Munyaradzi Mazarire (Zimbabwe) Perspective With Ladder - Mixed Media - 48 x 45 cm

Coming back to Kenya; two artists whose work has reflected, possibly anticipated, the current chaos and bloodshed – Peterson Kamwathi and Jacob Wachira Ezigbo. The former with his work charting the abortive constitution making process – see the images of the Bulls below in an earlier posting, and even more so, his beautiful large charcoal drawings of sheep illustrated here above, and featured at his show mounted by Ramoma at La Rustique in Nairobi last year, with the implements of war and death in their shadows.

Ezigbo has show in Nairobi at the moment which opened before the elections – his paintings are both beautiful and dark – there is an utterly authentic taste of the grimness of urban life for the poor in Kenya as well as the universal realities of hope and beauty, creativity, (suggested by the images of birds and flowers) despite hardship – red paint hurled at the canvas mimics blood, hands pointing two ways now suggest to me choices between two extremes of love and hate as well as dismembered body parts possibly referring to the Mungiki sect activities and the brutal police

Jacob Wachira Ezigbo ( Kenya) Oil on Canvas

response in the last six months of last year. Ezigbo is also a great print maker as well as painter and for me it is the iconography of his work that sets him apart from much of Kenya’s artists.

I sign off with a plea to all of you who are not in Kenya – please keep faith with Kenya and don’t let the images of brutality that the world has seen recently cloud your vision of a country that I guess has it all – the beauty and the horror, the rich and the poor, the sea and the mountains, fifty something different tribes and specimens from practically every country on the globe (my English self included) , we hope that the events of the last few weeks will be part of Kenya’s very painful growing pains. Kenya is not the picture post card land that our tourist agencies with their “Jambo Bwana’s” would like to suggest, it is an interesting , vibrant developing country with major social problems and inequalities of wealth combined with many historical social and political injustices that need to be aired and addressed urgently, I guess a good look at Jacob Wachira Ezigbo’s work will explain a lot.

P.S. Since writing this I have heard that Jacob has been forced to flee his Mathare Valley home, he is currently organizing relief supplies for his fellow displaced residents - if you want to make a contribution to the relief effort click on this link http://www.kenyaredcross.org/donate.php?subcat=91

New Group Show in Lamu for the Cultural Festival

2007-11-01T06:45:00.000-07:00

AN EXHIBITION OF PRINTS & PAINTINGS
during the Lamu Cultural Festival
at Gallery Baraka, Lamu Town
November 9th - 19th 2007

If anyone plans to be in Lamu for this year’s Cultural Festival, they will find a show of eleven artists that I am curating at Baraka Gallery, from November 9th to 19th. The exhibition is a mixture of prints (mostly woodcuts) and paintings. I am showcasing the work of Lamu artists such as Adam Musa, Mahadhi and Joseph Koi and also artists from Nairobi including Samuel Githui (Winner of the Painting Category Contemporary Art in Kenya award at the Alliance Françoise & Goethe-Institute.[2006]. Much of the work will be under $250 – I will be putting up further images on to the blog shortly.

The Baraka Gallery space, for those who don’t know it, is on the sea front of Lamu town which is an historic and beautiful Swahili town with architecture going back to the 17th century. The gallery (which has a small garden) is a de-consecrated (I think 18th century) Ismaili mosque, lovingly restored by Kate Baraka its current owner.

Hot on the heels of this exhibition will be another great group show for just after Christmas– and this will include work from the very exciting and highly sought after Gabrielle Pool. Stand by for further details and images.

Two Wonderful Richard Onyango "Drosie" paintings

2007-10-24T05:40:00.000-07:00

I am featuring here for sale two important “Drosie” paintings from Richard Onyango painted in 2003 – both Acrylics on Canvas and both fine examples of the best of his series of paintings recreating his affair with Drosie.

I Love Africa
Acrylic on Canvas
80 x 99cm

I love this painting! With its dazzling turquoise background – just the sort of colour scheme you do find on the Kenyan coast. Its depiction of the young Richard – content, cosy with his all powerful woman - the rich array of symbolism behind the figures from the spiders web style bedstead to the arrows through the heart, the fan doing its best to cool passions down and finally the self referencing “I love Africa” wooden sign. I quote from Andre Magnin’s writing about Onyango below and it is interesting that he refers to his “legibility” both these works seem to have that quality in abundance.

Drosie in the Casino
Acrylic on Canvas
80x 99cm
Another Richard Onyango classic – based on scenes early on in his relationship with Drosie. The painting has the dramatic intensity of his very best work.

“For the first thirty years of his life Richard Onyango supported himself through a remarkable range of occupations—sign-painter, truck driver, bus supervisor, woodcarver, carpenter, fashion designer, furniture maker, farmer, animal trainer. He was born in the western highlands of Kenya, near Lake Victoria; while he was still very young his family moved to the developing costal regions. His father worked for the Tana River Irrigation Scheme, and Onyango became fascinated with the signs of industrial development in the African landscape: trucks, tractors, bulldozers, planes, etc. As a child he recorded such impressions in a series of sketches he called “photo pictures” of “whatever my eye could see.” He has explained further, “To keep things properly in mind I had to draw them since I didn’t have a camera to record what I would like to put in memory.”
These elements are still present in Onyango’s paintings today. He frequently chooses to depict situations that waver between the exaltation of imported technology and its fragility. Accidents, warnings, calls for prudence reveal a world constantly threatened by disaster and the unforeseeable. Like many contemporary African artists, Onyango’s pictorial language is characterized by its great legibility. Rather than evidence of primitivism, this legibility demonstrates the importance Onyango accords to representation as a means of direct communication. The unreal theatricality of his work similarly engages the spectator: the distortion of perspective and form and the moody tonality of the heightened palette dramatize the painting’s relationship with the spectator, who in turn becomes a helpless or complicit participant in the events described.
This psychological tension is notably present in the paintings that Onyango dedicated to his relationship with Drosie. White and curvaceous, the young woman is represented in imaginary or real situations that compress all the fantasies that Africa projects onto the West. Whether depicting the couples’ alternating domination and submission or the fascination exercised by a life-style synonymous with luxury and wealth, Onyango succeeds in inverting stereotypes and denouncing their inherent violence.”
André Magnin
Curator of the Contemporary African Art Collection, Geneva http://www.caacart.com/

Email me if you are interested in buying these works ed.r.cross@gmail.com

Lovemore Kambudzi - the eye of the people

2007-10-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

The Need for Peace Through Diversity
2007/Oils on Canvas,/250 x 150 cm

Lovemore Kambudzi has never stopped painting the every day scenes from his beloved Zimbabwe where he is known as "The Eye of the People". Although he has attended residencies in New Zealand and Germany his heart has always remained firmly in Africa. With his unique style - his own blend of pointilism and cartoon-like depiction Kambudzi works tirelessly to document what is happening inside his own country. It is a very difficult task fit for heroes, even paint has to be sourced from neighbouring countries. This canvas is huge - two and a half metres by one and a half.

Richard Onyango's Sculpture

2007-08-29T07:47:00.000-07:00

Richard Onyango is no stranger to sculpture having made several models of his beloved land rover, a miniature train and several other works over the years, but he is now turning his attention to larger works.

Above are life size sculptures of Drosie (the woman he was in love with the eighties and who died tragically nine months into their relationship) and himself, produced for the Malindi Biennale, these particular sculptures are now the subject of a court case about which I shall comment later after the case has been decided - suffice it to say the life for an artist in Africa can be rocky - but Richard has an extraordinary attitude - he bears no grudges, he is only concerned with wishing for others what he would wish for himself. Totally undaunted by the legal machinations surrounding his first large scale sculptures he is moving on to literally bigger things with plans to produce an enormous ship installation which will house other sculptures representing elements of his life from Drosie, to buses, other machines and even wild animals. I believe Richard's forthcoming sculpture will be amongst his most powerful work he has done, and I will keep you informed about it as the idea takes shape.

See more of Richard Onyango's work in Jean Pigozzi's great collection of Contemporary Africa Art http://www.caacart.com/html/onyango_frameset.html

Artist's working in Africa - Ed Cross - recent work

2007-08-25T10:39:00.000-07:00

Sea Tree Oils on Paper, 100 x 80 cm, 2007

Head, after Harare , Oils on Paper, 100 x 80 cm , 2007

Lamu Garden Oils on Paper,100x80 cm,2007 (sold)

Eye of the Storm, Oils on Paper,100x80 cm ,2007

for further information contact ed.r.cross@gmail.com

Peterson Kamwathi's Kenyan Bulls

2007-08-23T01:01:00.000-07:00

Woodcut plates and Stage Proofs, Peterson produces editions of up to two prints per woodcut.

for further information contact ed cross on ed.r.cross@gmail.com

Two African Contemporary Art Shows

2007-08-09T01:33:00.000-07:00

Richard Onyango - Peponi Crossing Garsen Ferry in 1979 - Acrylic on canvas

Peterson Kamwathi - Kumbu Kumbu Woodcut print

Hi!
Welcome to African Works - we are dedicated to the collection, promotion and sale of contemporary African Art.

If you are in or near Kenya, let me start by inviting you to two shows!

Paintings, prints and sculpture by eight exciting contemporary artists from Zimbabwe and Kenya
at The Talisman Restaurant, Karen, Nairobi on Tuesday 14th August
from 6.00 pm to August 27th 2007

and

New works by Richard Onyango, Peterson Kamwathi and Ed Cross
at Gallery Baraka, Lamu
Private View with Drinks 6.00 pm Saturday August 18th, to 15th September 2007

Richard Onyango is one of Kenya's most celebrated artists, long collected by the doyen of African contemporary art collecting, Jean Pigozzi for his Collection of Contemporary Art in Switzerland www.caacart.com/ and exhibited in Africa Remix, the Venice Biennale and several other major international shows in Europe and the USA. In this group of work we see Richard turning his attention to both Lamu and the roads and ferries to Lamu from the seventies and eighties. Using his extraordinary powers of concentration and photographic memory he is able to "rewind the video cassette " as he puts it, and faithfully reconstruct the specific buses, boats and scenes from his boyhood of thirty years ago. I will be posting more about Richard's work in future...

Peterson Kamwathi is one of Kenya's rising art stars, a master printer who has trained at the London College of Printing, Peterson brings a purity of vision and purpose which is exceptional, his work is also unusually "contemporary" in that it has both conceptual and spiritual elements to it.

Those unable to attend but who would like to see more or better quality images of the work - please let me know by email at ed.r.cross@gmail.com

I have posted here some images of work from both shows - with more to follow - if you would like to know more details and prices, please email me.

All the Best

ed

Virginia Chihota - Untitled Silkscreen Print Cosmos Shiridzinomwa - Laundry Day II Oils on Canvas

Sikhulile P Sibanda Pattern of Life Colograph Print 3/50