One of the pleasures of visiting an exhibition based on a competition is that you can spend happy hours debating the judges’ choices.

The fruits of the third Manjano show are currently being shown in Nairobi, and with a first prize in the professional artists’ category of Ksh300,000 ($3,500) no less, there is certainly something to debate.

Manjano — it means Yellow and was chosen because of some imagined link between that colour and the City in the Sun — attracted 191 submissions, whittled down by the selection panel to 67 paintings, drawings, collages and sculptures plus a decorated dress.

The judges, who handed out a total Ksh645,000 ($7,600) prize money in professional and student categories, are worth recording: The sculptor Maggie Otieno, the curator Fiona Fox from the UK’s Tate Modern, and the Nairobi art lover and collector Sandeep Desai.

They had their work cut out.

Art is such an individual taste, anyway, but with criteria such as “adherence to the theme” (perceptions of Nairobi), “originality and innovation”, plus “technical and expressive ability” to guide them, they made their choices.

In the student category “potential for artistic growth” was also a factor.

Desai, reading out a statement by the judges at the exhibition’s opening, noted that, “what was apparent was the lack of participation from more established Kenyan artists.”

Their loss, in my view.

Urban sprawl

The professionals’ winner was Omosh Kindei, based at the Kuona Trust in Nairobi and a man who has for some time been fascinated by the urban sprawl.

He excelled himself with Concrete Jungle, a diptych showing Nairobi like East Berlin in the 1970s… a vista of densely packed, grey tower blocks.

The people who endure life in such homes were shown with exquisite contrast in rich crimson clothing, their antidote to perpetual, soulless misery.

The strong graphic elements of the composition danced across the joined canvasses.

The repetition of the huge rectangular blocks created a powerful condemnation of unimaginative architecture but also, unexpectedly, an awareness of its rhythmic beauty.

Second prize of Ksh150,000 (around $1,807) went to Michael Soi for Nairobi by Night, which showed a procession of the city’s angels being rounded up (and furtively groped) by those fearless protectors of our personal liberty, the police.

Social satire or accurate observation? Discuss.

Joint third with Ksh50,000 ($600) each were Paul Onditi with a group of six small paintings called Sinai Misty Mysteries and Dennis Muraguri with one of the matatu woodcut series that helped to make his name.

The Student category is always a tricky call. No-one expects superb work but with the emphasis on potential, Andrew Otieno was the winner.

He was awarded Ksh50,000 ($600). A student of Patrick Mukabi, he is far too loyal to his master’s style and like another of Mukabi’s students showing here, Alex Mbevo, needs to strike out on his own.

Mbevo was doing exactly that the last time I saw his work (at the city museum show) but here he seems to have slipped back a step.

Mukabi himself shows two pieces including a magnificent charcoal drawing, Mama Mandazi. Not among the prizes, for some reason or other.

Second placed student, winning Ksh30,000 ($350) was Dennis Rono Kipkurui with an imaginative wall sculpture called Culturally Locked City while third (Ksh15,000/$175) was Angela Warau Karono who offered a large pencil drawing of a sad eyed girl, Endangered Species Story.

Clearly from a photograph it nevertheless showed a developing technical skill and a willingness to take endless pains, for which she is to be warmly congratulated.

Other delights, although not among the winners were a small oil a street girl pondering her future, by Jackton Francis Owade, and a watercolour by Sylvia Morumbwa, of a woman leaping over an open sewer in a slum, wittily entitled Skip, Hop and Jump.

I also liked Lawrence Opiyo’s Baby Tech, a portrait in which the child’s hat rose above the edge of the canvas giving an added force, as well as dimension, to the picture.

The show was hung by James Muriuki who adhered to the principle that keeping it simple is the key to getting it right.

Thus, the pictures are hung mostly at eye level and next to each are clear notes, black on white, telling us the name of the artist, the title of the work, the medium used and the price.

Nothing clever, but what is there to go wrong? And why don’t all exhibitions follow that easy guideline?

The answer of course is that too many curators love to stamp their personalities on other people’s work by introducing quirky little gimmicks that are supposed to excite but in fact mislead and irritate.

The show fell between my deadlines (I write these reviews on a Sunday or Monday, to be published the following weekend) which means that if you want to see Manjano, you will have to be quick. It runs until this Sunday, February 26.

But if you can hurry to the Village Market, it is worth the trip.

There is a wide range of work to be seen — the good, the bad and the ugly — and the organisers, GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi who also put up the prize money, have done a fine job of giving us a lively show.

As I began, the joy of an open competition is that you can while away many happy hours arguing about the judges’ choices.

So, do I agree that Omosh Kindeh deserved first prize? I certainly do — and he won it by a country mile.

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