Brushes with Memory

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

Richard Onyango's Homage to the African Vehicle

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.

Richard Onyango's Sculpture

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