Tag Archives: lagos

Wild silk beside the East Sussex sea shore

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THERE IS A NIGERIAN woven fabric called ‘sanyan’. Made mostly by the Yoruba people, its principal ingredient is a type of wild silk. The fabric is thick and resembles denim or canvas in texture. Strips of sanyan are sewn together to make garments and other items. During a recent visit to the Hastings Contemporary Art Gallery, which stands close to the seashore, we saw an exhibition of paintings made on sanyan cloths.

The creator of these images is Nigerian born Nengi Omuku who was born in Lagos (Nigeria) in 1987. It is there that this artist, who trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, now works. Before becoming an artist, Nengi worked in her mother’s florist shop, eventually coming into contact with art when she began making preparatory drawings for customers’ garden planning.

Nengi’s exhibition at Hastings is called “The Dance of People and the Natural World”and is on until the 3rd of March 2024. The artist took large sheets of sanyan fabric, consisting of strips of sanyan sewn tightly together, and then coated them with a gesso ground. When this was ready, she then used oil  paints to create images. Whether it was her painting technique or some property of the material upon which she applied the colours, the resulting images have a uniquely haunting, other-worldly quality that I have not seen in other artists’ works.  

The paintings are well displayed. They have been hung away from the walls so that one can look at their backs. By looking behind the paintings, you can see the stitching that holds the pieces of sanyan together as well as beads of the gesso ground that had oozed between the adjoining strips. By looking closely at the paintings, the joins between the constituent strips of sanyan can easily be detected (see photograph above). These create an interesting surface texture quite unlike the canvas usually used by painters.

I enjoyed the exhibition not only because the artwork was attractive but also because I became aware of an interesting fabric, which is in common use in Nigeria.

An artistic British Nigerian in Mayfair

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WHEN WE ARE IN LONDON, we make regular visits to the commercial art galleries, many of which are to be found in and around Mayfair. Not only can one get to see some of the most recent works of contemporary artists, but also those that will eventually end up in private collections that are usually inaccessible to the general public. Today, the 12th of October 2023, we were walking along Cork Street, heading towards the Waddington Custot Gallery when we passed a gallery, the Stephen Friedman, which we had never entered before. Through its window, we saw works by an artist, whose oeuvre we enjoy, and entered.

Much of the exhibition at Stephen Friedman is dedicated to creations of the British Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare. He was born in London in 1962. His Nigerian parents took him to Lagos in Nigeria when he was 3 years old, and he lived there until he was 17. A year later, he developed transverse myelitis, which left him paralysed on one side of his body. Despite this, he went on to study fine art at the Byam Shaw art school, and then later at Goldsmith College (part of the University of London). Because of his disability, Yinka directs a team of assistants to create his artworks (sculptures, photographs, fabrics, and much more). He has become a widely exhibited and highly acclaimed artist.

Yinka’s works are visually engaging and highly imaginative. They are also full of meaning. He uses his creations to:

“… question the validity of contemporary cultural and national identities within the context of globalisation. Through examining race, class and the construction of cultural identity, his works comment on the tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe, and their respective economic and political histories.” (see https://yinkashonibare.com/biography/)

Although one can easily enjoy the aesthetics of his creations without understanding the artist’s messages contained within them, a good knowledge of colonial and post-colonial history will enhance the viewer’s experiences of them.

The exhibition is on until the 11th of November 2023. In addition to Yinka’s works, he has curated a small, but fascinating, collection of artworks by several artists from the African diaspora.

From Lagos in Nigeria to Peckham in London

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UNTIL I VISITED THE SOUTH LONDON GALLERY (‘SLG’) yesterday, the 11th of October 2023, I had no idea that Peckham in south London is home to one of the UK’s largest Nigerian diasporic communities. Some even call the district ‘Little Lagos’ after the capital city of Nigeria. Until the 29th of October 2023, the SLG is hosting an exhibition of artworks, called “Lagos Peckham Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes”, by Nigerian and British Nigerian artists. Lagos means ‘lakes’ in Portuguese, and the Nigerian city of Lagos developed on an area with several lakes. Part of the show is housed in the same building as the Camberwell School of Art, and the other in a nearby repurposed, former fire station, which was purchased in 2010 and donated to the SLG by the artist Raqib Shaw (born in Calcutta in 1974). The two venues are a few paces from each other, and both are well worth visiting.

The exhibition consists of photographs, videos (including an excellent one showing a woman in Nigerian clothing riding through Peckham on a black horse), sculptural assemblages, and coloured drawings. Words are inadequate to describe the imaginative exhibits, but if you are unable to visit the show, there is a good verbal summary of the artworks on https://www.southlondongallery.org/exhibitions/lagos-peckham-repeat/ . To give you some idea of the ideas that link the various works on the display, I will quote from the gallery’s guide:

“This exhibition brings together thirteen contemporary Nigerian and British-Nigerian artists to explore links between Lagos, meaning ‘lakes’ in Portuguese, and Peckham as a channel through which to address wider issues of migration. It is framed around ideas of pilgrimage, meaning journeys to a sacred or special place and, in this case, migration motivated by a search for a better life. At the heart of the exhibition is an exploration of the complexities of shifting notions of home and identity as generations of Nigerians settle in London permanently, return to Lagos, or move elsewhere.”

And I feel that this summarises the show very well. All of the exhibits are visually engaging in an exciting way, and if you bother to read the guide carefully, all of them convey the artists’ concepts with great lucidity and originality.

After seeing the show, you can obtain good refreshments in the SLG’s simple but attractive South London Louie café. The SLG also has a bookshop with many intriguing titles on offer.