BY TAJUDEEN SOWOLE
THE Lagos art landscape was
recently remapped with the coming of Watersworth in Lekki. The gallery opened
with paintings and drawings that focused on wild life by a Lagos-based South
African painter, Celeste de Vries.
Yesterday, Watersworth, which would have been in the same
neighbourhood as now rested Pendulum Gallery, Lekki, owned by the late Peter
Areh, opened another show, a solo, by the US-based artist and historian, Moyo
Okediji, titled, The New Modern.
Art gallery business, first and foremost, starts with
the passion for creativity, backed-up by hope that others might share the
motive.
For the director of Watersworth, Possible Chinaza
Orji, the response she got during the opening of the first show gave her the
encouragement to forge ahead.
Taking off with artists that are rarely seen on the
Nigerian art circuit may not be enough to show that Orji’s gallery has
something new to offer.
Most art galleries in Lagos, as observed, have not actually
moved from being art shops to proper promotion of artists.
What exactly makes Watersworth different?
Orji says that promotion is the gallery’s primary
goal. She adds, “we treasure talents, cultivate creativity, develop innovation
and support originality.”
She hopes to achieve all the aforementioned working
with established and emerging artists to nurture the skills of young people by
organising experimental and exploratory workshops and expositions.”
She says that the scope of the gallery include building and
nurturing of all forms of talents and celebrating uniqueness in all expressive
forms and mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking,
photography, installations and performance art.
Orji boasts, “our diverse understanding of art speaks
to all people and our goal is to contribute to the definition and articulation
of art as a global language accessible to both the young and old.”
Art is gradually considered as an alternative source of
investment, Watersworth will also offer brokerage to art.
She argues, “art is the crossroads between creativity
and capital.”
She explains, “we facilitate artistic expressions and
capital investments. In the international market, art did better than the stock
exchange in the last 10 years. In other words, art is not simply about beauty.”
For new art enthusiasts and collectors, who are green
on who to collect and when to sell or buy, Orji appears set to be of help. “We
are not just an art gallery, we are art brokers. We enable artists, corporate
bodies, collectors and investors to interact and facilitate beauty as an
instrument of producing values, building wealth, accelerating creativity and
consolidating treasures.”
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| Possible Chinaza Orji |
THE synergy between gallery
and artist was seen in Vries’ Wild About
Life — The artist’s first solo anywhere in the world and the gallery’s
first show.
In The New
Modern, Watersworth extends its vision, working with the artist on a
curatorial pattern that fits the gallery’s vision.
The artist, who is having his first outing in the
country after a few decades of being out of the scene, focuses the show on
security challenges in the country.
He stresses, “no longer can we think of today and
tomorrow with the same sureness that yesterday presented.”
Change, he argues, is a certainty, but “it is now
unpredictable and disconnected from all primal precedence. Life does not
translate into fixed and reassuring notions anymore.”
Separating Yoruba religious tradition from Isese
Translucent S.I. Media management agency for artists and art galleries
Hello Chinaza, i"m really happy for you and the extent you have attained. Saw you on Channels TV and i was impressed. Congrats!!! I hope you do remember? (RCF UNIBEN)(Nkonye)
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