Saturday 31 August 2013

In Okene, NGA’s ‘retraining trainers’ targets formal, vibrant art tutelage


By Tajudeen Sowole
In ensuring that the current and growing interest in fine arts is sustained with quality outputs, the National Gallery of Art {NGA} has taken the promotion of excellence to the trainers via a four-day workshop tagged Rebranding the Teachers of Fine Arts

It’s the NGA’s 2013 edition of International Visual Arts Teachers Workshop, which, according to the organizers, was formerly K-12 Summer Workshop organized in collaboration with Ohio State University, Columbus, U.S. It “was suspended few years ago. But it is “now reintroduced and coined International Visual Arts Teachers Workshop to replace the K-12 Art Teachers workshop”.

During the opening ceremony, held at Federal College Of Education, Okene, Kogi State, Director-General, National Gallery of Art {NGA} Dr. Abdullahi Muku, noted that the intellectual capacity of teachers provides a pedestal on which many generations of world thinkers and leaders evolve.

Muku, in his welcome address explained that NGA, being an agency of Government, tasked with the responsibility of creating an enabling environment for art development, “we are sincerely committed to the ideals of the Art teachers’contituency within the Visual Arts sub sector of the Nigerian economy”.


 The Ohinoyi of Ebiraland and Chairman of the workshop, HRM, Alhaji (Dr.)Ado Ibrahim (left) and D-G, NGA Abdullahi Muku at the opening of International Visual Art Teachers Workshop in Okene, Kogi state... recently.

On the theme of this workshop, the D-G argued that it “underscores”  NGA’s effort in boosting the teaching of Fine Arts at the crucial levels of education. He therefore warned that the gathering goes beyond a workshop. “It is a training- the-trainers engagement; a refresher’s programme for result-oriented Art teachers whose stamp is to be further felt in our larger society through their chosen career”.

Muku listed areas of interest of the workshop, which included structures, the curriculum, the restructure of Art teaching and its techniques; and comprehensive prognosis of enhancing Nigeria’s educational system. 

Resource persons and facilitators at the workshop included Prof. Jimoh Akolo, Prof. C.S Okeke, Prof. Sheriff Adetoro, Dr. Kwaku Kissiedu, Prof. Ola Oloidi, Prof. Tonie Okpe and Dr. Hellen Uhunmwagho.

From his remark, Hon Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, High Chief Edem Duke alerted that despite being in the digital age, Nigeria cannot afford to leave any stone unturned in her strive towards advancement. He however advised that such goal should be done “in a direction that redefines the contemporaneousness of our art development, which on a broader scale is expected to lead in a direction of national development”. 
He hoped that the results of the workshop will lead to “a thought process”, and justify the essence of the theme of the workshop.
 
Chairman, House Committee On Tourism, Culture And National Orientation Hon. Ben Nwankwo drew the attention of the gathering to the increasing huge talents in the creative sector, the credit of which he said goes to the art teachers. 

The workshop, he cautioned, “provides” an opportunity to assess the input of art teachers and perhaps, at the end of the gathering “refresh it”. He also added that among the focus of the workshop “is to engage the art teachers and allow them to interrogate the knowledge they already possess while opening up to consume fresh ideas and new knowledge”.
 
Contemporary works of art, Nwankwo argued, “documents” current events and the people’s culture, “It is a source of solidarity and a tickle on our consciousness to ensure that our aesthetic legacies endure beyond our time”.
Facilitators at the workshop, Prof Jimoh Akolo and Prof Sheriff Adetoro.
The National Assembly, he said, is aware of the importance of art, particularly the education aspects. Through the NGA, he assured, the lawmakers will make the necessary efforts to support art. ”We are also in tandem with the aspirations of the NGA to stimulate creativity in the fields of Art and to ensure they are progressively updated to global and modern trends”.

Provost, Federal College of Education, Okene Dr. Iyela Ajayi noted that the choice of the school for the workshop was well thought out. He explained that it was an acknowledgement of “the rising profile of the College as a veritable bastion in the provision of robust, utilitarian and vibrant art education”. 

He cited the school’s Department of Fine and Applied Arts as “a vibrant, dynamic, focused and result oriented teaching”.
He added that the Fine and Applied Arts Department of the college trains “middle level art teachers in the educational system”. 
He therefore hoped that the workshop provides what he described as “the impetus for a renaissance of effective teaching of art at all levels in Nigeria”.

Also speaking on the theme of the workshop, Rebranding the teaching of fine Art”\, he stressed that it seeks to “reposition” art education for effectiveness, particularly in the area of culture. “Participants will be given well- informed exposure to African art and culture especially the rich cultural heritage of Nigeria”.

Irish poet Nobel Laureate, Heaney, dies at 74.



Seamus Heaney, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, started his journey through ill health few years ago when he had a stroke.

Skyy News quoted  his family as saying Heaney "died in hospital in Dublin this morning after a short illness".

Well known as one of Europe’s top poet he was given the Nobel prize “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past”.
 
Seamus Heaney {1939-2013}.


Heaney was born in Northern Ireland, April 1939. He started as teaching and later  went into writing.
In 2007, Heaney’s books were recorded making “two-thirds of all sales of any living poets in the U.K.”.
The late poet won many other prizes including  the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, (1968);  EM Forster Award, (1975); PEN Translation Prize, (1985); Golden Wreath of Poetry, (2001); David Cohen Prize, (2009); T. S. Eliot Prize (2006) and a double, Whitbread Prizes (1996 and 1999).

First winner of Susan Wenger award for Excellence in Art gets prize


Governor, State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola presenting the maiden Susan Wenger Award for Excellence in Art to Adewale Oloruntogbe, while Mr Oladele Olaopa {right} of AARC and Dr Charles Akinola of OERP looks at the first Eperience Osogbo Art Fair during the 2013 Osun Osogbo Festival...recently

At a foundation lecture, Jari broadens debate on art pricing


By Tajudeen Sowole



Pricing and evaluating art, which traditionally, is based on the reputation or status of an artist, has been very contentious, particularly in this era of emerging secondary art market in Nigeria. But artist and scholar, Prof Jacob Jari’s presentation titled The Price of Art and Its Implication on Art Practice in Nigeria challenges professionals to rescue creativity from the jaws of short-cut syndrome. 

Presented to a full house of participants inside the conference room of the organisers, Omooba Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon Foundation {OYASAF}, Maryland, Lagos, Jari’s paper was the third edition of the host’s lecture series, which started in 2012. The debut of the OYASAF lecture series, organized in collaboration with Wotaside Studio was delivered by Prof Frank Ugiomoh of the University of Port Harcourt and the second by Dr Kunle Filani from  Federal College of Education, Osiele, Ogun State.

Jari, a professor of Art History, Ahmadu Bello University {ABU}, Zaria, Kaduna State noted imbalance, perhaps unfairness too, in evaluating art in Nigeria. He argued that such pricing of art, is erroneously based on who creates the work rather than its quality as art piece. He cited quite a number of examples, including personal experiences.

Jari’s argument is not new; a section of the art’s community not well-favoured and left out completely in the recent emergence of big sales in Nigerian art market have always expressed strong sentiments on the criteria used in pricing art. 

Having created an impression of Nigeria’s academia that is art blind, Jari, who holds a PhD in Art History distilled the worth of an artist’s labour as core of his lecture. From a 1991 personal experience of what he considered unfair treatment by a gallery in Lagos, to subsequent similar situations in selling his art, Jari’s search for a balance in pricing art kept expanding without an answer. In fact, he admitted that in one of such situations when he demanded for certain price for his work from a gallery, someone seemed to have asked him: ‘who do you think you are?’ And sometimes, it could be as direct as ‘Who knows you?’

Since then, he has been pondering over such question, “but the more I read about art and its practice, the more I realized that the last question was based on a certain naivety”.

 Although his further experimentation, he disclosed, confirmed that an artist’s reputation may make or mar the chance of being rated high in the art market. Jari however brought an example of two masters whose works have been sold, each at the extreme end of market value difference. 

“To put this issue in context, let us consider two artists, Jimoh Akolo and Demas Nwoko and their performance at a recent auction”. He noted that the two artists were classmates in the 1950s era of Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology {NCAST, now ABU}, Zaria.
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But during the 8th auction of Arthouse Contemporary in Lagos, May 2012 – referred to by Jari - Akolo’s painting, Untitled, {oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in},  was sold for N700,000 naira, an amount at a distant low to Nwoko’s Praise Singer {oil on board, 96 x 48} sold for N7 million  naira, Jari recalled. He stressed that “both artists are alive”, and asked: in selling the works, “what parameters were used? 

Indeed, Jari has brought a classic example in the Akolo {b.1934} and Nwoko {b.1935} comparison, confirming the dynamics of art pricing. Although not mentioned in Jari’s presentation is another interesting factor: Nwoko’s Praise Singer was a final year work of the artist at NCAST in 1961; Akolo’s Untitled, a 1998 painting. 

Nwoko’s work estimated for N8 to N10 million naira, it should be recalled, ended as the highest sold at the said auction. On display during the sales, Praise Singer looks like a piece just rescued from improper preservation; the tone was like a third generation of badly reproduced copy from an original painting. And that the auction house, Arthouse was wise enough not to bother restoring the faded colours before presenting it for sale, indeed, added to the hype and rarity that sold the work at such a high price.

And that Nwoko, a renowned architect was also coming from the feat of having recorded the highest sale for his wood sculpture, The Wise Man sold for N9 million naira, three auctions before the 2012 sales, could not be removed from the hype or build-up that sold Praise Singer. 
A stylized impressionism, Praise Singer is thematically semi-satirical, but stresses the artist’s consistence in native contents – as pronounced in his architecture works. It depicts the traditional entertainers’ intrusion into the privacy of highly placed personalities, mostly in Yoruba culture of old. For Nwoko’s depiction, it’s a solo effort in drumming and singing of a character in danshiki {short robe}, completes with kembe {baggy trousers} and gobi {cap}. With just a trousers and cap, the unwillingness of the host is obvious, even though he seems to be enjoying the moment - given the his attention captured by the artist’s rendition of a man sitting at the edge of the bench.

However, as comparative aesthetics of works of two masters is very complex in pricing, Akolo’s Untitled – a capture of horsebacks scene of ceremonial setting – could not be exactly said to be a lesser piece of art. So, what exactly went wrong such that Akolo’s painting sold for a distant N700, 000 to Nwoko’s N7m?

Prolific painter, Kolade Oshinowo who contributed to the debate from the audience seemed to have an answer. Presentation, Oshinowo argued, “is important when artists are selling their work”. He warned that whoever is presenting a work of art must properly represent the artist who created the work. He cited a personal experience how he insisted on a higher price against what London, U.K-based auctioneers, Bonhams, placed on his work sold recently. But he was vindicated when “later I got calls that the work even sold higher than what we eventually agreed on”.
A section of the audience during the lecture in Maryland, Lagos.



From the context of proper representation of artists, Jari’s question of artist’s right value for his or her labour is more salient as the lecturer has brought the two important examples. His choice of Nwoko and Akolo comparison appeared even more crucial in the debate: texts in the Arthouse catalogue of the said auction explain that each of the works was consigned from “collection of the artist”. This suggest that the artists represented themselves. 

Whatever myth that had been restraining artists in Nigeria from attaining their height, Arthouse auctions, since 2008 appeared to have shattered by creating new collectors. In fact, the Arthouse’s revolution of the secondary art market in Nigeria has been resonating across the entire art scene, home and the Diaspora.

On the “implication” of art pricing over the future of practice, Jari argued that the race to sell at higher prices, appeared to have reduced Nigerian artists’ ability to compete in actual contents on the international gathering such as biennales and other exhibitions.

 He stressed that “absence of any obvious change in the works of modern Nigerian artists is encouraged primarily by the price of art which is not founded on any logical basis”. 

Born in 1960, Jari attended St Murumba College, Jos and ABU. A few selected milestones Jacob has achieved include, coordinating the Aftershave Workshop from 1998 to 2008; curating the Accident and Design exhibition at the Brunei Gallery, University of London, London in 2000; heading the Department of Fine Arts, ABU, Zaria from 2005 to 2007; external examiner to Makerere University, Kampala from 2006 to 2008; external examiner to Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi from 2011 to 2013; and the Dean, Faculty of Environmental Design, ABU from 2013. 

His scholarship revolves around topical issues in art practice in Nigeria while his practice elevates rejects to prominence.

Wednesday 28 August 2013

‘Investigate deaths of journalists’, UNESCO boss charges Egyptian-backed military govt



The Director-General of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation {UNESCO}, Ms Irina Bokova has denounced the deaths of three Egyptian journalists and called for a thorough investigation into the lawlessness of the concerned local authority.
  
D-General, UNESCO}, Ms Irina Bokova


According to Reporters Without Borders, Mr. Gawad, a reporter for the Egyptian daily Al-Akhbar, and Mr. Al-Shami, a photojournalist for Rassd News Network, were killed on 14 August while covering demonstrations in the capital, Cairo. Both died from gunshot injuries suspected to have been fired by Egyptian security forces.
   Bokova stated: “I deplore the deaths of Ahmed Abdel Gawad, Mosab Al-Shami and Tamer Abdel Raouf,”  She urged the autocratic military-backed Egyptian government “to do everything possible to ensure the security of media workers.”
  Bokova expressed her distress and concern over the violence directed against the media in Egypt, where five media professionals have been killed while carrying out their duties in the span of a few days.
  Mr. Raouf was the regional director of Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper. He was shot dead at a vehicle checkpoint in Damanhur, in the Beheira Governorate in northern Egypt, on 19 August. Another journalist in the car, Hamed Al-Barbari, was injured.
 The UNESCO boss also frowned at the murder of Pakistani journalist Haji Abdul Razzak and Guatemalan journalist Carlos Alberto Orellana Chávez.
Mr. Razzak, 35, was a reporter for the Urdu-language newspaper Daily Tawar. His mutilated body was found in the city of Karachi last Wednesday. He had been reported missing since 24 March.
  A broadcast journalist in Guatemala, Mr. Orellana Chávez hosted a news programme on Optimo 23 cable television after having directed Radio Victoria for over 25 years. According to Reporters Without Borders, he was shot down as he was driving to work some 50 kilometres from Mazatenango, the provincial capital of Suchitepequez, in the south of the country.
  Ms. Bokova called on Pakistani and Guatemalan authorities “to do all in their power” to investigate the killings and shed light on these heinous crimes.