More than 200 paintings and drawings by 50 artists provided a stunning show at what was once the RaMoMA gallery in Nairobi, but what is now coyly referred to as “2nd Parklands, formerly RaMoMA.”

My prediction that the gallery, in spite of RaMoMA’s troubles, would continue to offer a superb range of visual art has gratifyingly proved to be correct — at least in the short term.

The exhibition, which ran to this weekend, was a collaborative effort between Art Without Borders and the Pamoja Dance Group and had the title Embracing Diversity.

Both AWB and Pamoja work with people who face more problems than most of us, through disability or illness, and they are to be thoroughly commended for their efforts.

Artwork training

AWB, for instance, offers training in various forms of artwork — card-making, beadwork, fabric decoration, painting — to pupils from Dagoretti Children’s Home, to patients in the Kenyatta National Hospital eye cancer ward, HIV clinic and the paediatric ward, and to women from the Limuru Cheshire Home which offers places to 32 women with physical disabilities.

There but for the grace of God, as they say — and Kenya’s artists responded magnificently to put on a show to generate income for these groups.

I did not see the dance, nor do I know enough about it to be able to tell you whether it was any good or not, but I do know that some very fine work indeed was on the walls.

Highlights included a strong life-size charcoal drawing of a single figure by Peterson Kamwathi and two taut abstracts by that intuitive painter Emily Odongo. She gets better and better with each picture I see.

Beatrice Njoroge showed two paintings on her current theme of transitions, each with an x-ray incorporated onto the canvas, while Sophie Walbeoffe contributed a large drenched watercolour of an elephant beneath Kilimanjaro (an artist who can do more with a flick of her wrist than many could manage given a week in an aerobics class).

Mary Collis offered three pictures in her more representational mood, the best of which was a view of a sunlit garden banked with daisies. I love the way she communicates her delight in such simple pleasures.

There was a small group of pictures on the staircase by Chain Muhandi (little seen these days — our loss, as well as his) whom I have always felt is one of the best of the first generation Kenyan artists, with his wry humour and cheerful technique of scumbling and glazing. It makes his pictures glow.

Dynamic tension

New to me was the painter Hussein Halwafi who incorporated Arabic calligraphy into his canvasses, creating a dynamic tension that holds the eye.

Also upstairs and next to each other were works by Kivuthi Mbuno, and Michael Soi, each in their own ways among the region’s most original artists.

Mbuno showed three canvases in — unusually for him — oils. In this medium, he has found a clarity and directness absent in his more usual crayon drawings... but at the cost of the shimmering mystery we have come to expect from his fantasy scenes of life in the village and countryside, where desperately grinning men confront giant snakes, and monkeys ride on the backs of leopards and giraffes.

One welcome development is that Mbuno seems to have stopped adding those little black birds to every available surface — an irritating tic that marked (and marred) much of his later work.

Soi paints deceptively; flat planes of colour bounded by black lines suggest a comic book simplicity yet his work conveys punchy social commentary ranging from lampoons on corruption to sly attacks on our sexual mores. He really is a very good artist and one, moreover, with something pertinent to say.

An excellent show — some first class work, well presented and a joy to visit.

In spite of persistent reports that an offer for the building housing the show is currently with the lawyers, it has also been suggested that there is light at the end of the tunnel and not, for once, that of the headlights of an approaching train.

Watch this space

Rather it is hoped that the gallery does indeed have a future as a creative arts centre. We shall see. Or, as they say in all the best tabloids — watch this space.

A future? Certainly in the short term, at least, because from next week until June 17, Arvind Vohora is showing some photographs at 2nd Parklands, formerly the RaMoMA, that he took in Afghanistan in the 1980s during his travels with the mujahadin.

Arvind Vohora... know the name? He is a long-term trustee of the Kuona Trust, which runs the eponymous Nairobi arts centre and is itself taking a keen interest in the development of a good exhibition space for the city.

Small world, innit.

Frank Whalley runs Lenga Juu, a fine arts and media consultancy based in Nairobi. Email: [email protected]