Advertisement

EA blooms in Seattle

Thursday February 03 2011
places

James Mbuthia’s Going Places, depicts a young couple embarking on life together. Photo/FRANK WHALLEY

The international appeal of East African art was reaffirmed last week with the opening of an exhibition in Seattle.

The sleepless city on the northwest coast of the United States, near the Canadian border, is hosting 11 works by Kenyan painters — no sculptors, for some reason — in a show that ties in with performances by the Spectrum Dance Theatre called Africa: The Mother of Us All... a title shared by the exhibition.

And it seems that our universal Mothers have been chosen with some care.

The paintings finally hung at the Columbia City Gallery, were ruthlessly whittled down from 24 sent to the States by Carol Lees of the One-Off Gallery, Nairobi, and Donna Donahoo who comes from the San Juan Islands off Seattle.

They used to work together at the RaMoMA, where Lees was curator and Donahoo ran the shop.

It is unusual for a curator to sit in judgment on an invited show but, I believe, a welcome one — let work be hung according to the merits perceived by those who have to defend their choices, rather than simply because they were sent with optimism and good faith.

Advertisement

If the curator gets it wrong, maybe that is not such a bad thing, either.

Discuss, debate, throw tantrums and even glasses of wine … but keep art where it belongs, at the centre of our experience.

There were some surprising omissions, including several painters who might usually be regarded as blue chip choices: Timothy Brooke, Sane Wadu and Richard Kimathi for example.

Another whose work was rejected was Joseph Bertiers, known for his quirky narrative pictures painted in a naïve manner.

Many find them charming but not so, perhaps, the gallery’s Kathy Fowls, who made the final cut.

Also out were Peter Elungat with his faux Renaissance dream figures, and John Kamicha, whose pictures are often painted on that Kenyan icon, the khanga.

Those rejected need not despair, however. Donahoo showed their work around and several pictures were taken for a show at Waterworks Gallery in the area’s Friday Harbour, scheduled for June.

Gallery owner Ruth Offen wanted an animal theme and chose pictures by Timothy Brooke, Elijah Ooko, Peter Ngugi and John Kamicha.

But enough of what you cannot see in Seattle. Instead, let’s see what did make the walls. 

Stripes, for a start. Both Ngugi and Ooko sent paintings of zebras, a single one in Ngugi’s case executed in his usual highly stylised manner — I cannot make up my mind whether he is closer to Tingatinga or to table mats — and a group of them by Ooko, called Love of Friends.

Then another zebra pops up on one of the show’s signature paintings — it appears on the posters — True Story, by Simon Muriithi.

This shows a man playing a pipe, attempting to woo a young lady while riding a zebra.

The colouring is delicate, with a scarf tied to his hat and flowing across the top of the painting rendered in a sharp jacaranda blue.

It contrasts sweetly with the rider’s rose pink shirt and the calm browns of the background. True Story?

The truth of it is that all men try to win women, the artist explained.

Two pictures by one of Kenya’s finest young painters, Beatrice Wanjiku, were chosen: Annus Mirabilis and Lost in translation.

The former, also used on the posters, was inspired by the Philip Larkin poem of that name, which translates as Year of Wonders and deals with the Swinging Sixties. It includes the memorable lines:

Sexual intercourse began in 1963
(Which was rather late for me)
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles first LP.

Disappointing then that the picture is somewhat less than priapic.

It is one of Wanjiku’s typical hieratic heads, scored by handwriting and with the ephemera of memories — letters, stamps — pasted onto the canvas and set off by its largely grey tonal scale.

Another artist with two paintings in the show is Cartoon Joseph: Our Homestead and Nature of a Mother, an allegory of nurturing motherhood, in which the central figure is expressing her milk into a gourd to nourish her pets.

Others speaking for East Africa are Salah Ammar — based in Nairobi although from Sudan — Justus Kyalo with a tightly controlled abstract, and James Mbuthia with his statement of love Going Places, a young couple embarking on life together.

Finally, an unmistakable Jesse Ng’ang’a, a homage to Ray Charles, plays a riff in one corner. Cue a pun on Hit the Road, Jack … but no, in this case let’s settle for America the Beautiful, instead.

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

Advertisement