Thursday, January 29, 2009

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Monday, January 26, 2009

Saturday, August 16, 2008

HIKE OF INDULGENCE


HIKE OF INDULGENCE


HIKE OF INDULGENCE


HIKE OF INDULGENCE


HIKE OF INDULGENCE

Hike of indulgences, 2008, clay and sweet and biscuit wrappers, 1600cm x 2800cm x 8cm (in variable dimensions)
In this litter of assemblages in variable dimensions, sweet wrappers are depressed into lumps of clay, in a way that allows part of their individual crumpled ends to stick out of them. Every lump has a unique type of pressure that has been exerted in its squeeze, as depicted in the different variations in the depth of the depressions of the fingerprints involved in each grip.
The sweet wrappers used in this work actually represent the fleeting pleasures of life and the clay grips on them demonstrate emphatically the varied degrees of importance every individual, irrespective of their race, colour, vocation, culture etc places on them. It is an accepted noteworthy observation that man’s wants are boundless but it is that endless pursuit of these indulgences that most times illustrate our basic definitions of living.

Friday, August 8, 2008

AJU


AJU


AJU


Aju,


AJU, 2008, CLAY and CLOTH, 20cm x 184cm x 41cm.
The work Aju (head pad) is made up of several pieces of clothes soaked into clay slip and folded in a pattern that bears the semblance of a head pad, which people normally use in carrying heavy loads on their head. The work is assembled in a horizontal line on a pedestal. The assemblage measures at about 20cm x 184cm x 41cm in variable dimensions.
There is an inextricable fusion of form and texture, a merging of postmodernism and classical realism entailed in this work in that the draperies which characterize most of the head pads deploy a shrewd sense of conceptual flow and harmony in its sculptural composition that is reminiscent of the idealism of the renaissance period. Literarily, the concept Aju suggests thickness or piles of cloth, and the artist’s idea of soaking the cloth in clay slip is to infuse the contextual feel of heaviness and thickness in the concept in order to establish balance, strength and stability in the overall theme of the installation.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

BEHIND THE BALLOT BOX


BEHIND THE BALLOT BOX


The ballot box, a row of 8 life-sized sculptures, each of them constructed with armatures of human figures wrapped with wire-mesh upon which blobs of clay have been plastered all over with. The figures are all of different sizes, shapes and heights and are wielded to a long, narrow rectangular metal frame so that they are in a sort of queue-like formation.
What with the current state of our political unrest, the ballot box has become a symbol of oppression, intimidation, violence and deception rather than the freedom the citizen has to exercise his or her franchise. One can no longer visit the polling centers during elections these days without witnessing some of the strangest atrocities and raves of violence and political thuggery or hooliganism that occurs in the new Nigerian definition of election.