Bad puns aside, Circle Art Gallery has put on an exhibition by 26 artists they have dubbed Young Guns to show us the best of a new generation.

But a question remains — why are they all men, and especially so in a show curated by a woman, the gallery director Danda Jaroljmek?

OK, a deplorably sexist comment no doubt and it’s her show, her privilege; but nonetheless where are all the Annie Oakleys and the Calamity Janes?
Because we have them aplenty.

Among those already receiving a measure of recognition is the award winning Jackie Karuti, while those yet to make a similar mark include the incisive expressionist Nadia Wamunyu currently at the Kuona Trust Arts Centre in Nairobi. Her vibrant landscapes made a strong impression at the recent Kenya Arts Fair.

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Jaroljmek’s explanation is that all the work she saw when visiting studios and collectives for this show happened to be by men. There was no conscious bias. The challenge remains to discover the hidden female voices, she says.

Well, I have named two and there are many more young women working in East Africa’s studios and collectives. For me it remains an odd and untypical omission, especially as this exhibition contains work by artists well past the Young Guns stage, as in the case of Denis Muraguri, internationally known for his paintings and woodcut prints highlighting Kenya’s matatu culture.

Woodcut prints

One woodcut at the Circle, a wall-filling 1.2m by 2.4m, is filled with colour and chaos… and its $12,450 tag is what one would expect to pay for a well-established artist rather than one eyeing success in the future.

A pine buffalo head by Kepha Mosoti is in the same category. A regular on the city art scene for at least 10 years, Mosoti’s piece is sharply carved and a thoroughly professional piece of work.

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Young Guns is a fair description of many of the artists who made the 60 or so works shown here, however. And for the most part Jaroljmek’s judgement seems as sound as ever with a range of styles and media on offer; from charcoal drawings and paintings to a piece of video art called Bedrock to Bedrock, by Lincoln Mwangi and Peteros Ndunde.

I admire the artists’ courage in exploring the medium, while failing to grasp its meaning. Happily all is (sort of) explained in the catalogue, which speaks of “generational interaction.”

Best painters

Among the best of the painters are Ian Mwesige, Elias Mung’ora and Sidney Mang’ong’o.

Mwesige adopts the Congolese style of faux primitif realism with two large acrylics on canvas; one of two sappeurs in bell bottoms posing back to back, the other of two young women gazing at a black and white wedding portrait, which judging by the happy couple’s clothing would be of their parents’ generation.

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Mung’ora’s large abstract Footprints 5 is a powerful statement in blue enlivened by touches of off-white and yellow, of how the city is changed by the way people interact with their environment, while Sidney Mang’ong’o layers strips of paper torn from political posters (for example) to create series of angular collages in exquisitely sympathetic colours that via deconstruction question the collapse of governmental institutions.

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Sculptures

Others to look out for include Lemek Tompoika with his stylish charcoal, pastel and graphite figure drawings on collage, in this case telling of war and its conflicts with religious texts, while Dickens Otieno presents two of his typical shimmering wall sculptures of torsos immaculately woven from strips of aluminum cans.

Primary Affiliation (Doctor), by Dickens Otieno. PHOTO | FRANK WHALLEY | NMG

They have real presence and we should see such imaginative and well executed work more often.

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Paul Njihia, whose super-realist Tower of Babel (the scaffolding is particularly well realised) reflects on the changing skin of our cities and David Thuku’s calm triptych Freedom of my Utopia commands a wall with three fettered figures seeking freedom from social restrictions.

Elsewhere, Mwini Mutuku’s Blue Chip is a meticulous celebration of technological innovation (I thought the weighty chains linking the nine delicate panels of this polyptych rather jarred, although possibly that might be their point; old techno versus the new).

Photography

Other artists to look out for include Leevans Linyera with his splashy abstractions, the photographer Julian Manjahi and his swirling imagery, and Isaiah Mwangi whose rich charcoal drawing in his Kafkaesque Society’s Canvas creates one of the most satisfying pieces on display.

I realise that my job is to review what is there rather than what is absent, but to return with a clunk to the gender balance — or rather the lack of it — while I would not judge art solely according to the sexual category of its creator, Young Guns does give us a rather lopsided view of Kenya’s emerging talent? Is it really all male? I think not.
Bang bang!

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