Soulfulness: Thirteen Artists, One Exhibition.

Walking into the Quintessence Gallery for the Soulfulness exhibition I was greeted by a host of decorative items that almost made me ask if I was at the right venue. I lingered between the displayed crafts long enough to observe a detour through the staircase at the western side of the hall. Curiously, I joined the detour and listened as one of the artists took the chairman of the exhibition on a voyage of artistic interaction.

Gele o dun

I tarried on the staircase as I perused the works by a group of artists who cohered to engage in consistent research and inquiries into the realm of robust visual images with boarderless outcomes. I noticed a melting pot of artistic discourse as well as a potpourri of diverse content.

Diversity however is appreciated when large volumes of content, thematic approach and subject matters are explored in a single exhibition of many artists.

The leader of the group, Kunle Adeyemi projects the unending movement of destiny in the growth and development of man in “Wheel of Fortune,” a paintocast work which occupied the eastern side of the exhibition hall. Elaborately texturized and ornamented, the work denotes a wheel through its circular composition.

“Gele O Dun” by Biodun Okemakinde provides an inquiry into the role of headgear in the ensemble of African women. Its iconography includes twelve women with elaborate headgears while strong emphasis was placed on the woman at the centre. He deliberately wore different styles of head gears on the women; a symbolic representation of the intricate skills required in tying headgears.

Tunde Oguntuyo’s “Timeless Cock Crow” is a representation of the rooster as a fervent time keeper. He depicted the rooster with its mouth wide open in a circular village setting with blue colour. This may be a symbolic representation of the rooster’s announcement of the breaking of the day. However, this scenario only exists in rural areas as urban areas are clouded with accelerated developments.

Olojo Kosoko tasked the ambivalence of the audience in “Co-existence,” a landscape with two dominant symbolic architectures in equal manners; one has the symbol of the cross while the other has the symbol of a half moon and a star. Could this be a representation of two different religions? Could it be a representation of tolerance or two opposing ideas? Olojo Kosoko did not answer these questions in the work. 

 

Olushegun Oduyele created an ambience of devotion, faith and prayer in his mixed media work, “Communion”. Two women are seen on their knees with their hands closely joined together while a cross is placed before them.  

Bashir Kalejaiye’s symbolic representation of wealth is exhibited in “Aje.” He depicts an opened calabash with the cover by its side and cowries in and outside the calabash. Once a legal tender in the days of yore, cowries symbolize wealth in the Yoruba society. 

“Friends of like mind,” a mixed media wooden cut-out with decorative motifs by Adetola Adenuga has three figures as its iconography. The figures are represented in a flat rigid pose without movement or flexibility.

   

In a round format, Nathaniel Hodonou explores plastic bottle covers and coconut shells in his work, “Oju to n soro” which literally mean “eye that speaks”.  His careful selection of vibrant coloured bottle covers in the work is engaging but did not accurately depict the eye.  However, cut-out shapes of the eye in the coconut shells could be the focus of the work.

Alade-gbongbe’s penchant for Yoruba believe is illustrated in “The site of destiny”. He emphasizes the human head as the site and seat of destiny through his intentional elaboration of the head in his abstracted mixed-media work.

In “Aftermath,” Jimoh Luqman presented a landscape with a smooth road and a number of yellow buses in a long row. The road is almost devoid of humans. Could this be an aftermath of development or an aftermath of rain? Jimoh Luqman failed to deliver answers to these questions in his work.

The attribute of man was given to deities in “Romance of the gods,” a mixed-media work of Adeyemi Abiola. Two figures fading into the sky are depicted gazing intimately into each other’s eyes. The stump-like shape that occupies the lower part of the axis of the work altered the theme of the work.

Dayo Adeyemi’s digital painting of “Lagos Mega City at Night” is an illustration of the ever-lively environment of the city across time while Isaac Joseph expressed himself with colours in “Revival”.   

Equally distracting the audience from the exhibition were the crafts on display at the gallery. Works of art speaks to a spectator and the spectator responds by appreciating the compositional elements of the work. At Soulfulness, the audience could hardly interact with the exhibited works as the displayed crafts were enchanting and attracting.

Strongly, the venue did not manifest an ambience of exhibition. It manifested an everyday arrival of visitors to the gallery as there was no boundary between the works for the exhibition and works that are permanently displayed at the gallery. This hampered requisite communication with the works.

Soulfulness is an art exhibition by the Visual Explorators, a group of artists who bridges the interstice between old and young in their quest for creative knowledge.