Interested participants are to propose in writing, a short plan of their interpretation and creative approach to the theme as well as the medium to be used.

We stress that PROPOSALS ONLY will be accepted. Completed or existing art works will not be accepted and
will disqualify you from the selection process.

Based on the submitted proposals, 12 finalists will be shortlisted and invited to partake in a retreat at an exclusive location which will result in the creation of works to be exhibited at the NAC Grand Finale/Exhibition.

All entries should be sent in Word document or pdf to:

nigerianbreweriesaaf@gmail.com

For more information call 01-7450750 or 08099921417

*Deadline for submission of entries 22nd June, 2012

Entries can also be submitted at the African Artists’ Foundation Headquarters, 54, Raymond Njoku Street, Ikoyi, Lagos and the Goethe Institut, City Hall, Lagos.

Date: 17th – 22nd of April, 2012
Venue: AAF Headquarters, 54 Raymond Njoku Street, off Awolowo Road Ikoyi, Lagos
Time: 5pm on opening day

NB: The exhibition is open to all!!!

The classes will hold once a week, every Saturday from 11am to 1pm at the African Artists’ Foundation Headquarters, No. 54 Raymond Njoku Street, off Awolowo Road,  Ikoyi Lagos. The kids will learn different areas of art and take lessons in the following;

• Arts and Crafts
• Mosaic work and Prints
• Drawing Classes including Figure drawing, still life drawings and Landscape drawing
• Painting
• Animations

To register your child for the classes costs: 2,000 naira (per Saturday attendance) / 7,000 naira (monthly).

For further information please send an email to atinuke.o@ africanartists.org OR call 01 – 7450750.

The Amateur photography competition was organized as part of LagosPhoto to engage and develop amateur Nigerian photographers. Under the theme, “This is Lagos”, the competition opened on the 10th of October 2011. Interested photographers were asked to send in their entries up till 10th November, 2011. It was open to all amateur photographers, across all ages, working and living in Lagos. Over 170 entries were received in total and reviewed by an experienced jury panel. Twenty -five finalists were shortlisted to participate in the grand finale exhibition.

As part of the activities for the day, there was a raffle draw sponsored by Etisalat where invited guests won internet modems and gaga phones. The twenty-five finalists were presented with certificates after which the winners were announced. Three winners emerged;

• 3rd place winner- Tolu Talabi, winner of N50,000 cash prize and an Etisalat gaga phone
• 2nd place winner- Bayo Omoboriowo, winner of N75,000 cash prize and a blackberry phone, courtesy of Etisalat
• 1st place winner- Isi Etomi, winner of N100,000 cash prize and a galaxy tab, also courtesy of Etisalat.

The second edition of the LagosPhoto Amateur Photography Competition was a huge success with a good turn out of guests, old and young alike.

When I had a first brief look at the book last Friday, I sent a note to Femi to say that, based on a quick leafing through I could say without doubt that it was ‘impressive in every respect”. I added that since the book spoke a lot for itself, I hoped to keep my remarks very brief, which should be the appropriate style for an event of this nature. I intend to do just that.

Having gone through the book in a bit more detail, my opinion remains unchanged. It is clear that Femi fully appreciates the importance of Nigeria’s rich cultural heritage and the need for it to be conserved, preserved, used to educate, inform and promote, and to extend and appropriately position Nigeria’s contribution to the global cultural markets. This commendable effort by Femi is an individual, private effort and I have no doubt that it will make a significant contribution to deepening the appreciation and understanding of Nigeria’s art history. His collection, which has been meticulously put together over the years, is very well complimented by Sylvester’s painstaking research and erudite writing and Kelechi’s breathtaking photography.

The main thesis of the book, in my simplistic terms, is that African art   owned by African collectors are marginalized by the Western countries for various reasons in the study, discourse, debate, and transactions on African art. This marginalization is not because the works in the hands of African collectors are necessarily inferior to those “captured” from Africa and now held in the Western collections, galleries and museums, but that Western countries have set the ground rules and conventions for aesthetics on African arts. The author goes on to demonstrate convincingly, based on the Akinsanya African Art Collection, that this Western canon is misplaced and should be re-visited by all concerned with African art in the Western countries and, indeed, elsewhere.

Professor Ogbechie is very well qualified to handle the subject he has undertaken. With a sound university education in Nigeria and the U.S., he now currently does research on, and teaches, art history in the U.S. with due attention to African art. Straddling the two worlds – African and Western – he is eminently placed to challenge these misplaced rules and conventions from within the Western system thereby bringing forth inestimable value.

Western marginalization has been the bane for Africa from the days of the slave trade, through colonialism, to the present post-colonial era. Many naively thought that political emancipation during the course of the last century would automatically translate to true and genuine freedom in all other spheres of life for Africans. Indeed the reverse may be true. As African countries gained political independence, the West retreated to the more subtle areas of domination and marginalization, particularly the economic and socio-cultural spheres. The situation has not been helped by the quality of leadership that many African countries have endured since political independence.

The situation in the socio-cultural sphere is far more distressing as our elected leaders have often acted as if arts and culture are alien luxuries that developing countries could ill afford. But our ancestors prove that such perceptions are wholly misplaced as shown convincingly by the antiquity, quality, quantity and diversity of traditional art of the past as reflected in the Akinsanya Collection and many other collections in Africa and the rest of the world.

On that note, I call for an urgent review of our National Policy on Arts and Culture and its implementation with a view to achieving greater relevance and sustainability such that our art and culture will become key development resources. The policy should provide for massive investments by the government and its agencies as well as the organized private sector, communities and wealthy individuals. The purpose would be to entrench and popularize arts and culture in our educational institutions as well as build relevant institutions and facilities such as museums, galleries, theatres, etc,  that will bring our arts and culture to the level of the common man. After all, art should not only be appreciated by the elite for its aesthetic potentials but should also be seen as a major defining element of a people’s identity.

It is in the foregoing context that I place the significance of this book. Besides calling for a review of the existing largely Western inclined canon of African art, the book should be seen as a wake up call for massive investment in the development of contemporary art and culture which will be bequeathed to future generations. It also draws attention to the many works in other African collections waiting to be explored and evaluated. For instance, part of the large collection of late Dr. Anthony Ukpabi Asika, Ajie Ukadiugwu of Onitsha, has recently been moved to the Obasanjo Library on loan and for archiving, evaluation and preservation. I believe that the private collections of several persons in this audience deserve a similar attention that the Akinsanya African Art Collection has received.

Therefore, on a closing note, I wish to re-echo the title of the book and indeed proclaim that history has been made by the Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection and the book on it by Professor Ogbechie. The world of African art will never be the same again. On that note, it is my great pleasure and privilege to launch the book: Making History – African Collectors and the Canon of African Art, by Professor Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie.

I thank you all for your attention.

Agbogidi

26 January 2012

The first Art and Fashion fair held on the 13th of March, 2010 at the AAF offices, Ikoyi. Fifteen vendors were present and about one hundred guests trooped into the premises. The second one was organized as a follow up while leveraging on the success of the first. It took place at the same venue with a total of eighteen vendors and two hundred guests. The third and final one for the year was organized as one of the activities to celebrate the Lagos Photo Festival on the 31st of October, 2010.

The first one themed “The unbreakable Nigerian spirit” in 2008 was open to professional artists alone. It was aimed at showcasing excellent artistic talent in Nigeria and beyond. A total of ten winners emerged that year and were each given the opportunity to exhibit their works in Lagos, Abuja and Amsterdam. The 10 winners were Oladimeji Alabi, Emeka Ogboh, Gerald Chukwuma, Segun Aiyesan and Yomi Momoh. Others were Gbolahan Ayoola, Emmanuel Dudu, Adetola Wewe, Emeka Obanor and Adolphus Opara. They were also given N200, 000 each.

By the second year, in 2009, a specific structure was put in place and the competition was better organized. The prize for the winners was clearly spelt out and the genres specified also. The theme was “Nigeria: The future I see”. Boundaries were put in place in a bid to make the competition better. It was open only to artists under the age of thirty and restricted to four genres; Painting, Photography, New Media and Sculpture. As a result, four winners emerged, one in each genre; Christopher Ogbami in painting, Olayinka Stephen Sangotoye in photography, Folami Razaq in new media and Richardson Ovbiebo in sculpture. They each received N750, 000 as winners of the competition.
In 2010, the third edition of the competition was open to budding and emerging artists of all ages as well as all visual art genres including painting, photography, sculpture and new media with the introduction of installation art, video art, mixed media and multimedia. The first prize winner, Sangodare Ajala went home with N1,500,000, Stanley Dudu, N1,000,000 and Fidelis Odogwu; N500,000 as the second and third place winners respectively.

The art competition has been a way to improve and encourage our indigenous artists and in each of the four years, this has always been the motivating factor. The themes have always reflected our desire to make Nigeria better and contribute in our own little way to the society. The first edition had the theme- “The Unbreakable Nigerian Spirit”, the second “Nigeria- The future I see” and the third edition was themed “Chronicles of a Great Nation at 50”.

In 2011, the theme of the competition was “Documenting Changes in our Nation”. Yet again, the joint force of Nigerian Breweries Plc and African Artists’ Foundation worked together in making this 4th edition to be one that would be talked about for a long time. This time, the price money for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place were increased; N2,000,000 , N1.5,000,000 and N1,000,000 respectively. What also made this year’s edition of the NAC stand out was the 1 week retreat in Abraka Resort, Delta, where the Top 12 artists went to finish up their works ranging from mixed media, photography, installation, sculpture and painting. Uche Uzorka and Chike Obialu clinched the 1st prize, Gerald Chukwuma was the 1st runner up while Olayinka Sangotoye came in third at the grand finale held on the 15th of December, 2011 at the Civic Centre, Oumba Mbadiwe, Victoria Island, Lagos.

The debut exhibition was a massive success among the art community, media press and layman alike and was attended by two hundred and fifty guests. Key attendees on the 27th and 28th Nov 2009 included, the Second Secretary to The Royal Dutch Embassy, Ronald Sonnemans, The Ambassador of Norway to Nigeria, Kjell Lillerud, Stephen Fulgham, MD Schlumberger Nigeria and his wife, Anna Fulgham, Society of Nigerian Arts President, Oliver Enwonwu and members of the Federal Road Safety Commission. Also in attendance were school children from Corona School, Lagos and Holy Child College, Lagos.

Following the success of this, SPDC and AAF collaborated once more in taking the message of the exhibition to key areas in the country. The exhibition opened on the 8th and ran till the 9th of February in Port Harcourt and in Warri on the 11th of February 2010 and finally in Abuja between the 2nd and 4th days of December, 2010.

The first photography festival of its kind in Nigeria, the Lagos Photo project aims to establish a community for contemporary photography, which will unite local and international artists through images that encapsulate individual experiences and identities from across all of Africa.

The inaugural edition of the Lagos Photo festival held from the middle of September 2010 to the end of October 2010, leveraging on Nigeria’s golden jubilee celebrations in order to truly make a significant impact on our society. The theme was “No Judgement: Africa Under the Prism”

The scheduled activities included workshops for children, classes for professional artists, art fairs, and a series of indoor and outdoor exhibitions that ran simultaneously throughout the duration of the event.

In 2011, the 2nd edition of the Lagos Photo project (Lagos Photo Festival) tagged, “What’s Next Africa?-The Hidden Stories” held in the month of October. The 2011 edition of LP attracted showcased works from photographers worldwide (including Nigeria). The somewhat month long festival kicked off with a grand opening exhibition on the 8th of October, 2011 at the Escalator entrance of the Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos with other activities – amateur photography competition, workshops, profile reviews, photo walks and the most attractive and 2 days of fun event, the “Party in the Park” at the Muri Okunola Park. Although Day 1’s fun at the “Party in the Park” was marred by a heavy down pour of rain, Day 2 made up for it and everyone had so much fun under the sun.