CHARLES SEKANO
The House of Women
Charles Sekano, the South African artist and musician, lived in Kenya from 1967 to 1997 and now lives in Pretoria, South Africa.
It was in Nairobi in the 1960’s, amid the very real isolation of exile that Sekano forged himself in to both self taught artist and musician – and where he worked as a Jazz pianist in the multiracial, bars and nightclubs of this rough edged African metropolis. Here he lived life in the tradition of a romantic bohemian artist and musician, developing his own version of the three Rs – "the three Ps" – Painting, Poetry and Piano. Like Degas and Toulouse Lautrec before him – living amongst his, mostly female, subjects.
His artistic expression was and is informed by the sense of loss experienced after his family were uprooted and by the resultant severing of family bonds. Women, for Sekano, - those that he immortalises in his works - became his world and his artistic language.
Sekano explains, "The whole idea is a symbolic relationship. Even the theme "Woman" seems to be remembering my mother, my sisters. I’m trying to live on a higher level with them because I have no communication to show that I am attached to them. They are inseparable from me. There is no border. This Woman theme is my landscape. The only piece of property I own. Woman is the only country I have."
Apart from two fine works from the late 1980s the paintings in this exhibition has been produced in the last two years
Ed Cross Fine Art thanks Simon Russell for his generous support for this exhibition.
Download catalogue and price list
Witness: The Spectre Of Memory In Contemporary African Art
Lovemore Kambudzi, 'Need for Peace through Unity in Diversity', 2007
Courtesy of a private Collection
Photo: the artist
The English Speaking Union - Scotland, 23 Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh
6 August - 30 August 2010
Mon - Sun 10am - 6pm
Free admission
Kenya’s Richard Onyango can remember scenes from his childhood and the more recent past with almost perfect recall and then paint them in vivid detail. Aside from any innate gift of recollection, this practice stems from a conscious decision made as a child when, lacking a camera but inspired by its power, he resolved to use his own mind as a recording device. The camera is the most obvious recorder of history, but in modern Zimbabwe photographers are more vulnerable to harassment than artists. Photography lacks the flexibility of painting, where all the components of a social phenomenon can be depicted.
Lovemore Kambudzi has been evoking the realities of life in Harare for the last ten years. The (decidedly unofficial) equivalent of a western ‘war artist’, he has emerged as the principal recorder of his country’s fate.
Peterson Waweru Kamwathi’s work is mostly linked to moments in the history of his country, Kenya. These references may not be made explicit, but there is a sense in his work of recording history at an oblique angle. His work painstakingly records his country’s political aspirations and their realisation or subversion, and the grave consequences of political failure.
Soly Cisse is haunted by the happy memories of his childhood which seem to seep into almost every canvas he paints in the shape of wild animals that he hunted in his youth – the animals appearing now to flee from modernity rather than the artist’s youthful pursuit.
The Private View of this event is open to the public, August 5, 6-9pm.