What's been going on with me...

It has been a challenge to blog regularly as my responsibilities increase as manager of the Africore Galleries. It has been a challenging couple of months but worth it in terms of professional and personal growth.

We are currently working on developing projects for 2010, which promises to be an exciting year in the arts and culture sector as well as for sports and recreation. Funding is always a challenge but we look forward to some really interesting collaborations between artists from Nigeria and their counterparts in South Africa.

I am off to Nairobi, Kenya for a 2-day seminar on cultural policy sponsored by the ARTerial Network from the 24th to the 27th of November.

I have also gone into a private business venture with two other partners, I think it is important to have other alternatives in these unstable financial times. Particularly in light of the current downsizing exercise by the Africore Group our parent company.

Please log onto the link below to visit the facebook page of the house of A.N.K.A.R.A.

Thank you!!

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&&suggest&note_id=197027111003&id=94074446029#/pages/Johannesburg-South-Africa/Africore-Galleries/94074446029

Re-visiting Lagos

I just got back from a two-week stint in Lagos and find myself re-charged and re-vitalised. it's difficult to describe the vibe that is Lagos, the energy, the drive..it is so uniquely Lagos.

I was happy to immerse myself in the madness. the endless traffic jams, the aggressive hawkers that make it easy for busy workaholics to shop from the comfort of their air-conditioned cars. only in Lagos I always say can you see such sights.

I loved and hated every minute of the stress and wahala. but it gives you a natural high, makes your senses stand alert because you just have to be smart or risk being outsmarted in Lagos. eko for show!!

I achieved quite a bit now i sit here thinking about it but while I was there it fel as if I didn't achive a single thing.

I started discussions regarding representation with 7 artists, I got five cds of images and a few cv's as well.

Basically, I have launched myself back into the arts and my past credibility still serves me well.

I am all set to achieve great things at Africore but i want to do it systematically and lay a sound foundation that will form a solid base on which to grow and develop the gallery.

It's been a while

I have been so busy with my new job as the manager for the Africore Gallery that I really have not had time to post anything new. I also have more obligations in terms of putting information on the web.

Africore Galleries has a face book page, a weblog and a website and just putting information on the face book page alone is time consuming but I love it!! It's wonderful to have all these choices at your disposal and they save you the cost of advertising before your are ready to.

I am almost at the end of my second month at Africore and we need to be moving to the next stage of being self-sustaining. It is a huge responsibility especially in these 'dark' days of recession to be selling a 'luxury' product like paintings. But it can be done, people still do need to have beautiful things around them don't they? We just need to find ways of making these objects of beauty more accessible.

So, I have my thinking cap on and the ideas are coming but of course one has to weed through and pick the most practical and efficient way of actualising these goals.

Pondering Peter Areh by Okey Nwafor...

As I reflect on the news of Peter's death, I interrogate the concept of violence in Africa and elsewhere. I interrogate violence in Africa because of the multiple dimensions violence has assumed in this continent. Ranging from large scale, collective ethnocidal violence to various forms of organized individual killings and extending to what Appadurai describes as "extreme forms of political violence against civilian population,"

I get cross at the rate of the escalation. Although you cannot divorce these kinds of violence from other continents but the contention here is the alarming senselessness which Africa’s own has assumed. I get worried that the terrains of my country are becoming more dangerous with the passing days. Things keep on degenerating without visible attempt by the so called government to address them. As a matter of fact, without being utterly pessimistic here, I have never seen or heard of any assassination case in Nigeria whereby the culprits were ever apprehended.

What is actually happening? If you think of any advanced and developed society you can count on Nigerians as one of the most successful groups in any field of human endeavour. But if you come back to Nigeria it would seem as though hell has been let loose. I don’t intend to use this space to cast aspersion on my beloved country but sometimes it makes me think sh*t when I remember the state of things in a country which should be one of the richest countries in the world.

Don’t misunderstand me as this write-up comes as a sudden emotional ejaculation to the death of Peter. Yes it’s true one cannot cry over spilled milk but let it be known to the world that the milk was most insensibly and brutally spilled that one cannot help crying out loud. Adieu Peter! Jee nke oma (Go well).