Saturday 21 February 2015

Merger, funding challenge of NGA's proposed-Abuja Biennale


By Tajudeen Sowole
With the implementation of the White Paper on Stephen Oronsanye-led Presidential Committee on the Restructuring and Rationalisation of parastatals, commissions and agencies, the proposed Abuja Biennale, which the National Gallery of Art (NGA) announced late last year appears to have suffered a major setback.  In fact, last week, a source from the NGA disclosed that the management of the government agency was not sure if Abuja Biennale has been captured in the yet to be passed national budget.
 
 D-G, National Gallery of Art (NGA), Muku Abdullahi


Also last week, a report indicated that Federal Government's financial commitments to all the affected agencies, parastatals and commissions in the White Paper have been stopped. Last year, the White Paper, among others recommended that the NGA be merged with National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) and function under a proposed National Commission for Museums, Monuments and Art Among all the merger recommendations concerning the number of parastatals under the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, it appears that only that of NCMM/NGA was accepted by the Federal Government.

Indeed, there were indications in the last two years that NGA had its activities rationalised, perhaps due to the impending merger with NCMM. For example, one of its major yearly events, Art Expo Lagos did not hold in 2013 and 2014.

And when NGA, late last year, announced its plans to hold a debut edition of Abuja Biennale, one was almost sure that the Director-General, Muku Abdullahi-led agency would source funding for the event from the private sector, at least to prove a point that it could function without government funding. But the disclosure about waiting for the budget suggested that the art event would be the first major casualty of the merger.

Art biennale, in most parts of the world, is usually used as a convergence of artists from different countries for exhibition and conference. Named after a host city, it is most often organised by government in partnership with sponsorship from the private sector. Quite embarrassing that Nigeria, a country that has contributed to the development of modern and contemporary African art resources, in works by artists and input from professional art managers of Nigerian origins has no biennale or any functional yearly art event.

Irrespective of what becomes the status of Nigerian art under the ongoing merger, it appeared that there has been a disconnect, between the NGA and artists, particularly in the planning of big art event like the proposed Abuja Biennale. For example, in his contribution to the issue of harnessing resources outside government's scope to rescue the proposed event, artist and an art academician, Dr Kunle Filani disclosed that "I am not even aware of the Abuja Biennale announcement."  A biennale, he argued, was a good development for Nigeria, but suggested a better organisational structure. "I honestly think an expansive creative event such as a biennial requires more time for planning for both the organisers, artists and diverse participants," and hoped that NGA had factored such into the event before announcement.

Apart from the NGA’s proposed biennale, Filani noted that generally, funding of cultural events in Nigeria has been “abysmal.” Government, he argued “always ignore the value chain of culture to the economic and social development of a society." He faulted government policies that "are not implemented to empower culture ministries and parastatals to generate money either from government or non governmental agencies." His argument underscores the great potentials of Nigerians' contributions to successful art events across the world.  "One can only hope that with the wealth of curatorial and creative capacities that Nigerians both at home and in Diaspora have, the Abuja Biennale will at least equal that of Dak'Art, Senegal, in quality and spread."

Given the parastatal status under which the biennale was conceived, sculptor, Olu Amoda argued that NGA should have expanded its source of funding outside government. "I think it is not realistic to lump biennale on budget.” He urged NGA to use “its leverage as a government parastatal to lobby for funding from multi-national in and outside the country."
  
Associate Professor of Fine Art at University of Nigeria (UNN), Nsukka, Enugu State, Krydz Ikwumesi would not exactly fault reliance on government budget “as a primary source” for art events. He however agreed that “there has to be other sources, especially from the private sector and international funding organisations.” And in regards to the proposed Abuja Biennale, the tourism value, he explained, is enough to attract private partners if properly articulated. “A biennale is a good instrument for tourism development. You can see how it has worked in Senegal, based on the Senghorian legacy.” Noting that Nigeria has not been so fortunate to have “art-loving leaders,” in the like of the late Leopold Senghor, he insisted “we can do something with the very vibrant art circuit we have here.”

Given the global scope that most biennales, art fairs and similar art events lean towards, resource persons to lead event, according to Amoda, could be sourced outside the country. “They (government) need to appoint an artistic director from within or outside the country, who may not necessarily be Nigerians.” He explained that if “we can contemplate or engaged foreign football handlers to coach the national football team, I do not see why it can't be done in the culture sector, at least with specific projects such as biennale or art expo.” Amoda cited examples: “The national gallery of Jamaica was a good case study, they went through the moribund as our NGA, but got out the mess when the government took the bull by the horn to appoint a French national who has been active in the Jamaican art scene. Zimbabwe appoints a Zimbabwe trained curator to the national gallery for it to be turned around. In these two instances, the structure is carrier based personal while the head can come from either outside or within the government.”

Amoda’s argument is not out of place: one of the fastest growing art events in the world, Art Dubai debuted in 2007 with a foreigner, John Martin as its artistic director and is currently being handled by another outsider, Antonia Carver; Nigerian born Okwui Enwezor is the Artistic Director for Venice Biennale 2015; Nigerian, Bisi Silva is the Artistic Director for 10th Bamako Encounters: African Photography, Mali.

The new merger, which has Nigeria’s national gallery of art being reduced to a unit, may have its first test in the proposed Abuja Biennale. When the merger of NGA with NCMM was first made public last year via the White Paper document, artists and other stakeholders were unhappy and feared that modern and contemporary Nigerian art would further suffer neglect.  Former chairman, Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA), Lagos State chapter, Dr Kunle Adeyemi disagreed with the merger. "With the merger, art would be relegated just as a unit under the new parastatal," Adeyemi warned. He traced the merger to the lack of financial independence of the NGA and blamed "civil servants for mismanaging" the parastatal.

Really, the merger as it unfolds, perhaps affecting the take off of the proposed Abuja Biennale makes no difference. As a full parastatal on its own, yearly events such as Art Expo and African Regional Summit on Visual Arts and Exhibition (ARESUVA) were not sustainable.

With four artists, Omenka goes to Cape Town Art Fair


Duke Asidere, Gerry Nnubia, Ndidi Emefiele (Nigerians) and a Cameroonian, Joel Mpah Dooh are four artists whose works go on display from February 26 to March 1, courtesy of Omenka Gallery, at the second edition of the Cape Town Art Fair, V & A Waterfront, South Africa.

With the exhibition, Omenka strengthens its international exploits for artists of African origin or base. Last year, the gallery took quite a number of Nigerian artists to art fairs in Europe and the Middle East.
One of works for Cape Town Fair, a mixed media on canvas, Eva, 2014, by Ndidi Emefiele,
 
  According to Ladun Ogidan at Omenka Gallery, each artist comes into the Cape Town Art Fair with different "primary point of investigation." For example, Dooh, she notes, "is preoccupied with experimentation and has enjoyed international critical acclaim with his paintings and multi-media works.” The artist, Ogidan explains, is inspired by the tactile reality of his environment though is mostly an inner traveler. He works on paper, canvas, corrugated iron and most recently acrylic sheets. “The Cameroonian also incorporates earth, paints, clay, packaging, wood, and chalk to explore the fragility of individual human identity and how we reinvent ourselves while moving and evolving in the city.”

For cubist, Asidere, it’s about themes that engage contemporary African politics. “Through visual metaphors, the artist comments on the everyday human drama that surrounds him; political, social, psychological or cultural. Furthermore, he adds an element of surprise to these sketches of human drama by infusing them with irony and humour.”

Asidere’s broad oeuvre, the gallery says, includes headless or limbless figures and faces of strangely hybrid beings as well as densely populated urban landscapes, accentuated with thick strokes of vivid colour. And in recent times, his work, it has been observed “has turned to car enamel paint, which he applies with a spray gun to produce emotionally charged works that retain figurative subject matter, and at the same time emphasise abstract qualities.”. Among the painter's high point on canvas is "simplicity of form and expressive line."

For Nnubia's texture of canvas that "offers critical possibilities for painting," it also delves into what the gallery describes as "tensions between form and formlessness, vital to the tenets of modernism with his acrylic flow.” The artist’s technique features "skillful manipulation of his medium to a liquid viscous flow often assimilating accidental occurrences and temperature adjustments, depending on the effect sought."

In the rendition by Emefiele comes the traces of combined ancient Egyptian and Yoruba aesthetic flavours. Omenka notes how the artist  "adopts the historic practice of using the body symbolically, dating back to the sculptures and paintings of ancient Egyptians, whose “god-like” pharaoh was often depicted much larger than ordinary mortals as in his erect, stiff posture signifying unyielding majesty and authority." Also, the heads of the female figure, it has been observed ,"are large, bearing semblance to those of traditional Yoruba sculptures, carved disproportionately to other parts of the human body to emphasize its function as the seat of wisdom, upon which the destiny of an individual is carried."  The strength of the artist in depiction of the female body "becomes a contested site and an important source of information, through which she challenges established notions of beauty."

In gathering the artists for the Cape Town event, the main focus, according to Omenka was "a strong contemporary outlook" that engages the traditions of African art history. The result is "in iconic imagery that captures intense and challenging moments."

Omenka is one of the leading art galleries in Nigeria and represents a fine selection of established and emerging contemporary African and international artists working in diverse media. Omenka stimulates critical discourse on African art through solo, group and large themed exhibitions accompanied by informed, scholarly catalogues.

In ensuring sustainable presence for African art within a global context, Omenka participates in major events like Art Dubai, Joburg Art Fair, Cologne Paper Art, Docks Art Fair, Lyon, LOOPArt14, and 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair. Additionally, Omenka encourages a cross fertilisation of ideas by collaborating with leading galleries across the world to bring the work of many international artists to Nigeria, often for the first time. Omenka Gallery also organizes several workshops and residencies to encourage curatorial and professional artistic development.

Saturday 14 February 2015

Danish photographer Mads Nissen, wins World Press Photo 2015



The winner of World Press Photo 2015, Danish photographer Mads Nissen’s work, which was was selected by the international jury of the 58th edition of the yearly award.  Prizes were given to 42 photographers in eight categories.

Insulating factors in Nigerian art market against austerity measures


By Tajudeen Sowole
Once again, the resilience of Nigerian art market faces a test of its economic relevance as the recently announced austerity measure may push art collectors into crucial choice of art buying in 2015, and perhaps in the years ahead.

Possibilities (Bronze, 157 X 176.5 cm, 2013) from Babatunde.
Economic measures that tend to limit choice of spending to 'essential needs' are not exactly strange to the Nigerian art market. From the recession years of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in the .mid 1980s through the later part of the same decade to the political unrest of the June 12 1993 era of the 1990s as well as the 2008/09 global meltdown, art collecting has proven that essential needs are relative. During each of these periods, some collectors, ironically, increased their collection just as artists churned out more works. Such behaviours only underscore the fact that art could be an essential need, ironically, in the period of economic recessions.

After several alarms were raised by sections of the private sectors over the worsening state of Nigerian economy, to which the Federal Government consistently reeled out series of denial responses, Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, formally made a pronouncement of admission in November 2014. "As part of the response to falling oil prices, the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and the Budget 2015 proposal to the National Assembly have been revised," Okonjo-Iweala stated. She explained the oil benchmarks as varied inconsistence with the budgets. "Government is now proposing a benchmark of $73 per barrel to the National Assembly compared to the earlier proposed benchmark of $78." As she prepared the minds of Nigerians for the task ahead when she said, "We must be prepared to make sacrifices where necessary,” the price of oil has since dropped further than the budget envisaged.

Beyond a mere official pronouncement of austerity measure, economists and other financial experts would  want to argue that across the board, the nation's economy was hardly out of the hard times anyway. For the Nigerian art market, its appreciation value in the last six to seven years has risen unprecedented, suggesting that the art scene would respond adequately to the austerity measure without slowing down of business activities. 

The Nigerian art market can be divided into formal outlets such as art galleries, auctions and exhibitions. The sales and other exchanges in art market that go on regularly via individual artists' studios may be loosely refer to as informal outlets. Given the fact that most artists are not represented by art galleries in Nigeria, the sales done within the studios are often shielded from formal records of art auctions and exhibitions.

Few days ago, artists and art managers such as gallery owners and dealers expressed diverse views about the effects of the new economic policy on art. A formal pronouncement of austerity measure by government, according to Kolade Oshinowo, a former President, Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA) “is always very frightening and destabilizing especially for the artists.” Oshinowo agreed that “people immediately want to re-order their priorities and the first thing they believe they can do without is art.”

But the austerity measure challenge for art has been contained severally, curator at Quintessence Gallery, Moses Ohiomokhare said. "We have had two slumps in 1973 and 1983, which opened us to new ideas,” he recalled. The new austerity measure challenge, he stated will not be any different from similar ones several decades ago.  “This is what one expects in 2015 as there will be reduction in spending." Oshinowo insisted that some collectors would “step down their activities,” while the more passionate ones keep buying art. He also warned that new economic policy discourages “potential and new collectors.”
  
While noting that art collecting is considered a luxury in Nigeria, particularly as in the period of anticipated effect of the drop in international oil market price, Ohiomokhare argued that art is the overall beneficiary in the devaluation of the local currency.  "However if one is able to interpret the effect of devaluation of our currency, one finds that it encourages exports of arts to other markets as you get more value for your money if they are sold abroad."

Indeed, the Nigerian art market has, subconsciously though, prepared for the sudden devaluation of the local currency. In addition to the rise in value of Nigerian art at home and in the U.K market, few Lagos-based art galleries and quite a number of individual artists have stepped up their efforts in exploring the European market in the last one year. For examples, Omenka Galleries, Art21, ArtHouse Contemporary and Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) took some Nigerian artists to art events across Europe last year. The trips added to a yearly art auctions Africa Now, organised by Bonhams - one of Europe’s leading auction houses - which has been holding in London since 2009. But Ohiomokhare cautioned that such outlets may want to take an advantage of weaker naira to look for cheap Nigerian art. "The international market will find our art now cheaper than before the devaluation."

For artist, Emenike Ogwo, the period of austerity measure and devalued naira should bring the best out of the studios. "This is the time to be more creative so that artists have reason not to allow collectors devalue your work," the painter warned.  “Amazingly at the end of every dark tunnel there is a ray of shinning light,” Oshinowo stated, arguing that “the period is always the best time for the clever collectors to get the best works.”

With access to the Internet, artists, Ohiomokhare stressed, would be more opened to foreign market. “The net should be explored more by art dealers.” And for the local market, it is not likely to be a hard nut to crack for long in 2015, he predicted. “My expectation is that the art market will open up in the second quarter of the year after a lot of adjustments must have been made and one is able to see the direction of the change." Oshinowo, a former art teacher of over three decades and currently in full-time studio practice, said courage is the motivating word. He urged artists to “braze up for the challenges ahead by being prudent with their finances and keep their creative activities alive,” as well as “maintain their professional ethics and bring out their best at this period,”

Being the only sub-division of the creative sector that is hardly profiled based on racial boundary, the visual arts have the potential to earn more foreign currency than other products of The Arts. And that Nigerian artists have been dominating the contemporary African art market scene in Europe of the last few years suggests that the economic situation at home may be an additional boost to further exporting of art from the country.  For examples, sculptor, Bunmi Babatunde recorded his world auction sale with Possibilities,  (ebony wood, 255 x 16.5 x 42cm, 2014) sold for (£31,250) at the last Bonhams Africa Now auction, in London, last year. Much earlier, in 2011, a group show titled Small is Beautiful (Miniature Art Fair), was held at Arc Gallery, Barge Belle, Tottenham, London and showed the works of Ndidi Dike, Duke Asidere, George Edozie, Okezie Okafor, Ayoola Gbolahan and Babalola Lawson. Over 150 pieces were reportedly taken to the fair. In a separate outings, the gallery had also shown Nyemike Onwuka’s Elegant Urban Decay, a depiction of drift from beauty to decay; Uchay Joel Chima’s Much Strings Attached, a focus on mutual relationship; and in 2011, one of the exhibited artists of Small is Beautiful, Gbolahan made his debut with Arc in a body of work titled Horizon, a rove over his native Yorubaland, in relations to thoughts on global perspective.

Last year, works of Sokari Douglas-Camp, Victor Ekpuk, Kainebi Osahenye, George Osodi and Victoria Udondian were the face of Nigerian art as Lagos-based Arthouse Contemporary joined a global gathering with R-evolution, a stand at Art14 Fair, in the U.K. Recall that after the Guild of Professional Fine Artists of Nigeria (GFA) elected its second set of executive in 2012, the new leaders, headed by Abraham Uyovbisere assured that the goal of the guild would focus the international art market. A year after, GFA, courtesy of a London-based promoter, Aabru Art showed the works of select members in the exhibition titled Transcending Boundaries. In Aabru, GFA appeared to have secured a representative in the U.K.
 
And when artists were not going under a group, individual efforts also came in as well.  Last year, a solo exhibition Chronicles of the Enchanted World, by design artist, Victor Ehikhamenor showed for five weeks at The Gallery of African Art (GAFRA), U.K. But despite recent impressive performance, and perhaps dominance of Nigerian artists at auctions in the U.K, Ehikhamenor thought they deserved more.

                      Adire Hybrid a mixed media by Victoria Udondian shown at Art14, London.


However, the other side of the sword is not so pleasant as it also means that the best of modern contemporary Nigerian art may be heading abroad, most likely in the collection of private individuals.