coastweek.com

Leading Kenya Artists
to Exhibit In Mombasa

WORKS of BEATRICE WANJIKU, RICHARD KIMATHI, PETERSON KAMWATHI,
MICHAEL SOI, OGONGA THOM ON DISPLAY AT the ALLIANCE FRANCAISE

Coastweek - - Alliance Francaise de Mombasa and Kuona Trust; the leading Kenyan non-profit visual arts organization, set up to give skills and opportunities to Kenyan visual artists are holding a collaborative exhibition show casing recent works by five Kenyan contemporary artists.

The exhibition opens on the Tuesday 16th September 2008 at 6.00 pm at the Alliance Francaise Mombasa, and runs till the Monday 6th October 2008, weekdays between 9am-7pm and Saturday 9.30am-12.30pm. The participating artist are based in Nairobi and are Beatrice Wanjiku, Richard Kimathi, Peterson Kamwathi, Michael Soi, Ogonga Thom. Beatrice Wanjiku is one of the most prolific female artists in Kenya. She is a graduate of the Buruburu Institute of Fine Art where she studied painting. Her inspiration is from her day to day life and is highly visible in her work. She has participated in various workshops and exhibitions both locally and abroad and was most promising young artist in the 2006 Elysee Treaty Art Competition jointly held by Alliance Française and the Goethe Institute in Nairobi. Richard Kimathi is with no doubt one of the most interesting artists in Kenya. A graduate of the Creative Art Centre, he started his career at the Kuona Trust studios and has gone a long way to become an award winning artist with his work being used by the United Nations to produce a stamp. He is very flexible and mostly works on mixed media on canvas and his subjects range from distorted animal figures to distorted human forms which have a lot of humor in them. He won a scholarship residency award to the University of Kentucky in the United States in 2002.
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		Coastweek - - *Some art works from painter Thom Ogonga.*

He has vastly exhibited locally and abroad.

Peterson Kamwathi, an internationally recognized artist and printmaker took up art after graduating from high school, is among Kenya’s leading contemporary artists.

His work has been part of numerous national exhibitions in his native Kenya, as well as exhibits in England and The U.S. Kamwathi works primarily in woodcuts and monotypes, but has enjoyed taking part in other art studios at UK including the metal and glass mediums.

He is one of the very few artists in Kenya to have substantial political content to his work.

His sheep series is dark, mysterious and captivating.

Michael Soi, a graduate of the Creative Art Centre says his work is as simple as can be. “I try to create an attitude of what you see might be what you get from it.

“I encourage the viewer to come up with any conclusion they want after viewing my work.

“My interest in erasure comes from my work as a visual artist working mainly in images, collage and multi media.

“I am involved in work that deletes, distorts and changes various images into what I want them to be, and am excited by the subtle play that erasure seems to create when executed in certain ways.

“My work is not about the suppression of images or distortion, or the negation of what the image represents, but is about obscuring the images in order to create a different relationship between the final piece and the viewer.

“When I first started this body of work I felt that the erasure of images in art, rather than being destructive, contained the potential to provoke an ambiguous and shifting “sight” of both the original image and the work.

“If not destructive then, could erasure be deconstructive ?

“In this case I am positive that for the first time in my life as an artist, I have been made to question the possibility that erasure can be at times destructive and this is a realization that really disappoints me and more so the destructive erasure by an organization that should be in the fore front in preserving this kind of images for the appreciation and enjoyment of the general Kenyan public.”

Ogonga Thom, an artist who also works at Kuona Trust started out as a painter but with time has ventured into printmaking and occasionally tries out not-so-good photography, videos and installations.

He is fascinated by night life and the beauty of women, as is evident in his work.

His work is clean, reductive and illustrative often working with the female form.

He’s exhibited widely in Kenya and abroad and also participated in several International Artists Workshops.

He has also participated in special projects like the travelling billboard (images in transit) and painting with refugees in the camps (building art together).

He was awarded the 2nd prize in the painting category in the Elysee Treaty competition in 2006.

Members of the public are invited to enjoy this unique exhibition that promises to be a refreshing glimpse into the current evolutions in Kenyan contemporary art.