The Exhibition

10 September 2010

Here is a bit of piggin English I’ve pilfered from Face book:

it is already paying off.... the only thing wey remain na to hammer and that 1 na soon...but chetakwa anyi oooo!!!1

heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey Qualest eny,howf?

...evrythn apart from witholdin my paintin!

sharrap and pay me my pp money

u 4get 2 put "HELLO" b4 ur comment

My muslim pple i no feel dis tin una de do today o

u know au many pple dem don sack for work wey dey use work time dey facebook?

No wonder I do not always understand them or worse misunderstand them.



My page in the brochure for the exhibition



On 30 August I wrote in my diary: Surprise, surprise an exhibition yesterday for which I was totally unprepared.  I somehow understood it was going to be at the end of September.  Imagine getting a call on the day of the exhibition to tell you they are going to fetch your paintings and you thought it is a month away.  Luckily I had some older paintings and…no wallah. Can I blame piggin English for that slip up?



Second surprise: On my previous visit to an opening of an exhibition, we stood waiting outside the gallery for more than an hour before the doors opened. We were there even before the artists, and we actually arrived a few minutes after the time announced for the opening.  From that experience (and other social experiences we have had) I thought this is how things are done, you know…...Africa time, and arrived an hour late for the exhibition only to find that the opening speeches and introductions of the artist have already been done.   On realizing my blunder and in a bit of a daze I was pushed in front of a TV camera and an interview started to take place with me.  “What is it like to work with Nigerian artist?”  “What do you think of Nigerian art”.  Hey man I’ve been asleep not more that ten minutes ago (taking a Sunday afternoon nap), what do I say?  Not a comfortable position and I cannot remember what I said and certainly did not watch the TV.  I hope they scrapped the footage.



Nick in front of TV cameras



Nick has been in similar positions several times before, and people actually reported on seeing him on the TV.  These Nigerians have TV cameras at every occasion and I guess because our faces are white they like to home in to us.  Even Alison had a TV interview the first day after she arrived here.  It was on the occasion of the opening of the soccer world cup when the South Africans and Mexicans in Abuja all got together at the Osokoro Protea hotel to watch the event on the screen.



To get back to the exhibition, it was an interesting experience but I am glad the pressure of the exhibition is off now and I can carry on doing just what I want to, paint without thinking of an audience to come.  I met my fellow exhibitors and some of us have plans of working together.  Now that will be interesting.