Hallmarks of excellence in mixed exhibitions are many and various.

They include a common theme that gives the show some sort of unity; good lighting with minimum reflections; work hung at roughly head height; clear labelling; and a broad spectrum of content, with established names at the top of their game plus a sprinkling of newcomers to leaven the bread.

A recent show entitled Paper ticked most of these boxes. The loose theme enabled a wide range of drawings, paintings, prints, constructions, sculptures, photographs and collages.

By the nature of the material many of the pictures were glazed, which made reflections a problem or, as some aesthetes might argue, offered the bonus of closer involvement with the image; the visitors’ reflections wedding viewer and viewed with a closeness neither artist nor organiser could have imagined.

The good news is that overall Paper was a delight: The bad news is that you will not be able to see it because it lasted for only four days.

In that short time, it served its commercial purpose in that most of the works bore red spots. However, for those of us with our walls already full, or who are broke, or who love to see art without necessarily owning it, the brevity of this latest offering by Circle Art Agency of Nairobi was a bit of a disappointment. It repaid repeated visits.

No doubt the work not sold can be seen in the Circle offices and I know you can have too much of a good thing, and it makes sense to leave ‘em wanting more… but still, only four days is pushing it.

Circle assembled more than 160 works by 43 established and emerging artists touted as from East Africa. It must have been a massive technical feat to get this lot together, beautifully framed and hung and then for the most part sold.

Part of Circle’s aim was to attract new collectors, just as their recent auction was to stimulate the secondary market.

When, I wonder, will they hold a characteristically brief exhibition to appeal to grandmothers, dwarves, disabled vegetarians or some other previously unnoticed purchasing segment?

I do not know how many visitors bought their first picture, but I do know several of the artists were showing superb work.

High among the established names were Peterson Kamwathi (two large and glowing charcoals) and Beatrice Wanjiku, who gets better with every picture I see.

Notable was an anguished head with her trademark glittering teeth, set on a pale cream background washed over newspaper cuttings. A powerful, disturbing piece.

Other examples of excellence were the herd of papier mache horses called Refugee Race by Edward Chiselhands, the former dentist known to his patients as Edward Okero, who changed both his career and his name; a couple of densely textured monoprints of beach scenes by Mathias Muehle; and a group of no fewer than 56 drawings of a dancer in motion by Samuel Githui.

Treble banked, lined up, unframed on sheets of A4 brown paper, drawn in charcoal and chalk and called Transformation Series, they reminded me of the photographs by the pioneering Victorian Eadweard Muybridge.

Individually they were stunning; together they were sensational.

Others who appealed greatly included William Wambugu, known so far for his detailed drawings of agricultural tools and a comfy sofa, but here he astonished with something new — two beautifully controlled abstracts, each projecting a strong swoop of black ink on a grey, washed ground. They offered the confidence of Japanese calligraphy and might well prove to be a springboard for him.

Walls and spaces

The exhibition was held in a private house, which is being offered for sale; enabling the organisers to use all the walls and spaces as they pleased.

There were four rooms downstairs and four up… in one of which were two richly textured pictures by El Tayeb, and a group of ink drawings of faces superimposed on old maps by the Egyptian Souad Abdel Rasoul.

The intimacy of a single face set on the wider perspective of a map — apart from showing women’s amazing tendency to generalise from the particular — became a metaphor for the interwoven relationship between the private and more public parts of our lives.

More, much more, of Rasoul’s drawing skills can be enjoyed at the Red Hill Gallery near Limuru in a joint show with her husband, the Sudanese Salah Elmur, until April 6.

There are 24 drawings by Rasoul in ink on mixed media, all very illustrative, densely detailed and a pleasure to investigate. Inside the faces are printing presses, more maps, pages from medical textbooks in English and French, even a sheep.

Elmur offers 36 paintings (26 acrylics on canvas and 10 earlier watercolours) plus 12 cut-out heads mounted on an outside wall. A painter, photographer and film-maker, he also writes and illustrates children’s books. And it shows.

This decorative quality is a trait of many Sudanese artists schooled in Khartoum; El Tayeb being a happy exception.

More Sudanese work is by coincidence on show at the One-Off in Rosslyn, until March 26. By Salah Ammar it is more a compilation of Sudanese and Nubian iconography than an incisive attempt to understand society and our place in it. Meticulously finished, it has the polished appeal that makes it an automatic choice for banking halls, reception areas and the boss’s office.

Frank Whalley runs Lenga Juu, a fine arts and media consultancy based in Nairobi