In
reviewing the growth of the visual arts scene in Lagos, this year’s edition of
Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) assembled professionals under the theme, Lagos: A City Of Art, using a recent
rise in documentation as a guide.
Held inside Kongi’s Harvest
Gallery, Freedom Park, Lagos Island, the books used as references included Contemporary Nigerian art in Lagos private
Collections, (edited by Jess Castellote), Artists of Nigeria by Onyema
Offoedu-Okeke and Ben Enwonwu: The Making
of an African Modernist, by Sylvester Ogbechie.
Moderated by video artist and curator, Jude Anogwih, the discussants, which
included Castellote, Offoedu-Okeke, Olu Ajayi and Prof. Peju Layiwola reviewed
the Lagos art scene and outlined the current challenges that could affect the
future growth of the Lagos art scene.
Also, the organisers, Committee for
Relevant Arts (CORA) continued its art exhibition segment of the yearly LABAF with a show titled No Fly List.
Indeed, the increase in the number of books published on
Nigerian art, in the last few years questions the readiness of practitioners to
face challenges, which artists, managers and promoters are most likely to
encounter in the years ahead. This area of concern he moderator, Anogwih echoed
in his introduction shortly before the first speaker, Jess Castellote’s
presentation.
An
architect and art critic, Castelotte noted standard or quality as a key factor
that could shape the future of Nigerian art. Galleries, auction houses and
documentation, he argued, must have “the quality” to project the artists and
their work. And perhaps speaking from experience of having edited one of the
books used as background of the gathering, Castellote however warned that
documentation, for example, cannot happen in a vacuum if artists are not
measuring up to expectation.
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An installation titled Pain on Board by Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo
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With Castellote’s submission on quality, it appeared that the gathering found a
higher pedestal on which to place the central focus of the theme as Anogwih
broadened the scope and dragged painter, Ajayi. Being a full time studio artist
of over three decades and former chairman Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA),
Lagos State chapter, Ajayi shared his thoughts about the complexity of
achieving “quality” across the facets of Nigerian art. The creative
professionals generally, including visual artists, Ajayi argued cannot be
insulated from the state of the country. In fact, he specifically mentioned the
various schools of art in the higher institutions of learning as the fountains
to be held responsible for the declining quality of the creative industry. “The
state of the nation in every facets of our life affects the output of the
artists as well”, Ajayi insisted.
Defending art teachers of higher
institutions, Prof Layiwola of Creative Arts Department, University of Lagos
(UNILAG) traced the drop in quality to the non-flexibility of most schools’
curriculum. She noted that, “in this age, schools are still using old
curricular of 1960s.”
She also
used the occasion to stress that the issue of general decay in the country’s
higher education system, of which artists are not left out was the main issue
in the ongoing face-off between Academic Staffs Union of University (ASUU) and
the Federal Government
If artists would have to wait for
an improved state of the nation to be spurred into adding value to the system,
the purpose of creativity would have been defeated. Artists, in the pasts – renaissance
and modernism periods – were known to have made impact on their environment and
contributed to innovations, even during national and continental darkness. Why
are Nigerian artists not taking cue from history, by being the change agent,
rather than waiting for others to make the change?
Ajayi
defended artists by arguing that non-availability of resources makes the
creative professionals, particularly in Africa, stranded and mired in
confusion.
Also of note was that over the years, art spaces in Lagos
were shrinking in numbers. And more worrisome, the existing art galleries are
not catching up with the aggressive expression, particularly in large format,
of artists’ works. How has the changing megacity look of Lagos’ architecture
imbibed art in both space and contents? Castellote noted that clients who are
engaging in new building are hardly art conscious, but hoped that “maybe with
time things will change.”
Again, the National Gallery of Art
(NGA) came under scrutiny when Ajayi revisited the lack of a modern and
contemporary museum of art or national gallery edifice. Such facility, he
stressed is necessary for artists to have a stronger space for expression.
Author
of the most recent of the publications, Offoedu-Oyema shared his experience of
how the Lagos art scene inspired him to publish the book. He explained how he
came to Lagos with the intention of producing a magazine for the creative
industry, but “saw a bigger vacuum in documentation”. He however argued that
despite the question on quality, Lagos “remains the best place to get high
quality” of nearly everything in art. He noted that the gap between Lagos and
the rest of the country, still in terms of quality “energized the book I wrote”.
Suggesting that the situation in the higher institutional of
learning was not as hopeless despite the “obsolete curriculum”, Layiwola
informed the audience that at UNILAG, entrepreneurial programme has been part
of activities of the Creative Art Department lately. This, she explained, was
designed to prepare the students for challenges ahead of post-school career.
The
importance of visual arts in the yearly LABAF
event was again stressed in what has become tradition of the festival, as art
exhibitions of mainly installation and other forms were not left out. This
year, five other artists joined the two regulars, Nkechi Nwosu-igbo and Jelili
Atiku, in the exhibition titled No fly
List. It featured the metal artist, Fidelis Odogwu, Photographers, Adremi
Adegbite and Aisha Dapchi; Port Harcourt based painter, Diseye Tantua; and
poet, Jumoke Verissimo.
In
her curatorial note, Nwosu Igbo explained that the gathering of the artists and
a poet attempts to capture the “controversies and excitement of living in
Lagos” during the shades of response that followed the relocation of some
destitute from the state to Onitsha.
Other art exhibitions held as part of the LABAF
2013 included Still Old And New by
Uche Nwosu in association with Visual Arts Society of Nigeria (VASON) as well
as Lagos in Pictures, a show of archival works from the collections of Edward
Keazor, Dr. Raphael James of the Centre for Research, Information Management
and Media Development (CRIMMD).
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