GALLERIES: Prizes for talent? Here's to next time!

Detail from Nairobi Under Pressure, by Peter Walala; and right, DYU See It?, a cityscape by Andrew Chege. PHOTOS | FRANK WHALLEY | NMG 

In Summary

• All-comers exhibition celebrates its 10th anniversary with a show of students and established artists, but as usual the judges’ choice excites debate and now we’ll have to look to the future with hope in our hearts.

By FRANK WHALLEY
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Happy anniversary! Manjano, the art competition that welcomes all comers this month reached its 10th edition — so congratulations to the GoDown Arts Centre of Nairobi that organises the event.

For anything to last that long in the East African art world is a triumph in itself and particularly happy returns are due because of the encouragement this competition gives to young talent.

This year entrants were invited to explore human interest in Nairobi; a yawning brief into which any artist could fit just about anything. The temptation to lift and dust an existing work must have been overwhelming.

Of the 196 entries 50 were hung and they can be seen in the exhibition area hived off from the first floor car park of the Village Market, Gigiri, until April 22.

From those lucky 50, ten finalists were chosen and the judges then awarded three prizes (first, second and third) for each of two categories; Students and Practicing Artists.

Except that they didn’t.

Their choice for first prize in Practicing, it turned out, had previously been submitted for the 2015 Manjano, and thus was disqualified under the rule that all submissions had to be of works made in 2018.

What was that about lift and dust? Oh, the shame of it!

So, no winner in Practicing, just a second and third; although why they did not simply shuffle everyone up a peg I do not know.

Second placed was Andrew Chege with a huge (around 6ft by 4ft) cityscape called DYU See It? … two angled skyscrapers in indigo set against a turquoise sky and with burnt orange reflections of the setting sun against their sides — a distinctive piece that lives in the memory. Certainly it deserved some recognition.

Third in Practicing was an equally large view of an orator orating an oration with a few wananchi slumped around his podium. Called Compassion and notable for its flaming, headache-inducing palette, it was by Allan Kioko.

Winner of the Student section was Florin Mmaka with From my angle — The City, a small collage of a figure in which the head was replaced by a luscious red mouth.

Second was a view of traffic lights called Direct Orders by Gohole Otto while Third was Taabu Munyoki’s rows of 42 faces in different colour combinations that paid too much homage to Andy Warhol and his Marilyn heads.

One of the great joys of a juried exhibition is to disagree with almost everything the judges decide.

Did Manjano’s three judges — Beatrice Wanjiku, Maggie Otieno and Wambui Kamiru Collymore; excellent artists all — tippy-tap their way around the show with little white sticks?

Of course not, yet this year they seemed to get most of it completely, hopelessly and gloriously wrong.

That said, I must in fairness acknowledge that previous Manjano judges have a fine record for spotting talent.

Past prize winners include a Who’s Who of the Kenyan art scene: Samuel Githui, Onyis Martin, Elias Mung’ora, Michael Musyoka, Dennis Muraguri, Andrew Mwini, Paul Onditi, Dickens Otieno, Florence Wangui and many more.

The many more include Peter Walala, who won in 2015, came third in 2016, third again last year and in my view should have won this year by at least 10,000 kilometres.

His wall hanging Nairobi Under Pressure was of 430-odd tyre pressure valves, neatly stitched together and framed. It should have been a shoe in, with wise judges regarding any untypical minor imperfections in finishing as subsidiary to its overall brilliance.

Walala is well known for his pithy comments on consumerism in which dozens, if not hundreds, of fashion labels taken from mitumba are carefully stitched together and framed. The effect is beautiful and strangely uplifting.

Nairobi Under Pressure, although sombre with its dark grey rubber tyres, glittered with the polished brass of hundreds of pressure valves and it achieved magisterial authority.

It was also by far the most expensive piece on offer at an equally authoritative $14,000. (The cheapest was a delightful little print of a matatu by Kelly Kinyua at just $20, already framed. A snip.)

Michael Soi, another previous prize winner, was also cast into the darkness.

Acclaimed internationally for his combination of comic book simplicity, social commentary and biting humour he was not even a finalist.

His painting Separation of Church and State, with its collision between the established Church and gay rights was nonetheless cheekily placed on the outside wall of the exhibition space in the expectation no doubt that it would attract the crowds.

With it hung a couple of landscape sketches by the ever-improving Coster Ojwang’ and a splendid view of the National Archive by Nelson Ijakaa.

Other delights included Conductor’s Chair, a decorated bench by Evans Ngure, a cityscape called Concrete Jungle by Leevans Linyerera, the almost lifesize tin wall sculpture Housegirl Basking on a Verandah, by Mike Kyalo and two finely made clay chess sets Power 1 and Power 2 by Moses Sabayi.

So, possible winners galore but not a prize for any of them in this year’s anniversary show.

Eleventh edition, here we come…