SPACES & SILENCES

     
 

  1. None of the works has been exhibited in Nigeria before.

  2. Some of the works have been exhibited in Germany and the USA.

  3. Some of the works have not been shown before.

  4. Recent works include those produced in 2004 or in the last four or five years.

  5. A selection of works going back several years will give the viewer a sense of some of the aesthetic concerns of the artists over the years. It also provides a basis for observing stability and change in the corpus of each artist.

  6. The mediums represented in this exhibition include ink, wash, watercolour, gouache, etching (aquatint), graphite, dry brush, and collage.

  7. Some of the works explore the evocative possibilities of combining image and text. The text is sometimes ‘readable,’ occasionally combines words and phrases in English and Igbo. A close reading by a viewer might turn up familiar words and personages.

  8. The works celebrate and affirm the mutual importance of a mark or gesture on paper and the surrounding ‘empty’ or ‘negative’ spaces. What is said is as important as what is left unsaid. In this frame, the viewer becomes an active participant in the creative process by ‘completing’ the narrative, by joining the configuration of broken lines, by filling in the silences.

  9. Several themes have been covered by the artists – in the spirit of the title of this exhibition, the themes are sometimes ‘revealed,’ at other times ‘concealed.’ Viewers are invited, encouraged and authorized to bring and share their own readings of the works.

  10. The works affirm the establishment of drawing and watercolour painting as important presences in contemporary Nigerian art. For a long time, the study of African art was restricted to sculpture. Starting from the 1960s, however, drawing began to attract the attention of major and upcoming artists in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, notably Sudan and South Africa.