Bruce Onobrakpeya shows us round the Niger Delta Cultural
Centre, venue of the annual Harmattan Workshop he started in Agbarha Otor,
Delta State, in 1998. The workshop is now in its 12th year (“we missed a year,
in 2001,” he tells us).
“Oladapo Afolayan introduced stonework in 1998,” Onobrakpeya
informs as he leads a tour of designated workshop spaces for the various visual
art disciplines. In a couple of weeks at the centre, an artist can produce up
to six pieces; one is donated to the Bruce Onobrakpeya Foundation (BOF), which
organises the workshops. Stone pieces from previous years are on display, but
the stonework is now done in the open air outside, as it generates a lot of
dust. We are shown the Printmaking section, which is large, because “we need
water, we need space to move around.”
The Onobrak Etching Press, proudly Nigerian in manufacture,
stands to one side. University of Benin MFA students were standard participants
in previous years, but not now, as there’s no one taking Printmaking at UNIBEN.
Touching a kiln used for firing ceramics, Onobrakpeya says, “We’ve toyed with
ceramics in the past.”
How Harmattan started
The Harmattan Workshop is “a retreat where artists can meet,
think and share ideas. If you can get good ideas, those ideas can go into the
art.” Onobrakpeya was inspired to start the programme after his own “positive
experience” in workshops of the past. As a student at the Zaria School of Art
in the 50s, he bowed to “peer pressure” and studied Painting, which was the
“respectable” thing to do.
Things changed when University of Ibadan Extra Mural Lecturer
Ulli Beier and Michael Crowder (then Minister of Information, also in charge of
the Exhibition Centre, Marina, Lagos) made contact with the Zaria Group.
Onobrakpeya later attended art workshops organised by Beier in Osogbo, Ife and
Ibadan in the 60s. A nine-day printmaking workshop in Osogbo had a profound
effect on the young artist. “My eyes were opened,” he says. “It changed my
direction. Similarly, an artist’s direction can be changed [at the Harmattan
Workshop]. And if you have not found your direction, you can find it in a place
like this.”
Looking back, Onobrakpeya reflects that, “Beier and the
influence of the late [Susanne] Wenger were very important in my development as
an artist.” In 1975, he attended the Haystack Mountain School of Art and Craft
in Maine, US. “I realised that people, whether they’ve gone to a normal art
school or not, can still benefit from the workshop environment.” Haystack was
the inspiration for the layout of the Niger Delta Cultural Centre, right down
to the accommodation chalets constructed from wood. “The scenario is that we
wait for ‘Oyinbos’, but I thought, why don’t we do it ourselves?”
Keeping BOF going
BOF’s workshops are extremely popular, not just with artists but
with local women who come in droves to learn jewellery making. “We remove
poverty from people’s lives. Those who learn jewellery and textiles, they go
and eat with [the skills]. We employ local people. When the place is buzzing
with activity, the locals see, they see the calibre of people. There was a time
Agbarha Otor was fighting for a local government. They stood up proudly and
said: ‘we have this, we have that, and above all, we have a museum.'”
BOF is a non-profit organisation that relies on funding and
donations. Ford Foundation, once a mainstay of funding, has not supported BOF
in the last two years, the policy focus having changed to museums. Some support
comes from art organisations like Arthouse Contemporary, Terra Kulture and
OYASAF, while galleries like Signature and Mydrim sell BOF artworks. Proceeds
from the sale of Onobrakpeya’s art also go into the running of the centre, but
more funding is needed to keep the centre going. “This place will only continue
to go on if the alumni will contribute to help it grow,” he says. Artists Kunle
Adeyemi and Adeola Balogun are among the alumni helping to facilitate workshop
sections in 2010.
The present and the past
There are three sessions this year, as well as two weeks in
August when artists can work unsupervised. BOF plans to seek UNESCO sponsorship
for artist residencies from all over the world. Onobrakpeya urges for an
exhibition to showcase the fact that Nigerians have been creating art for 50
years, noting that it was the Trade Fair Exhibition that brought a crop of artists
including himself to prominence during independence.
The 2010 Harmattan Workshop was billed as a platform for
discussing the gains and failures of art production since 1960. There are
reminisces about art patronage in the 60s, especially the Thursday-Thursday
Show on McEwen in Ikoyi, Lagos, where Jean Kennedy Wolford opened up her home
to showcase artists, free of charge. “On Thursdays, I would go and they would
put lots of money in my hands and I thought: my God, I could live on art! £35
was a lot of money then,” Onobrakpeya recalls.
A gallery for
contemporary art
The Niger Delta Cultural Centre – set in scenic countryside with
an outlay of chalets for participants and guests – is only Phase 1 of BOF’s
plans. An adjoining seven-acre land has been acquired for the construction of
proper workshop sections, as well as exhibition and conference facilities.
The four-level building that serves as the main set-piece on the
site, was designed by Demas Nwoko in his beloved impluvium style; and was built
from 1989 to 1998. “The advantage of this is light and air,” Onobrakpeya says.
Everywhere one looks, there are artworks in every medium, made by former alumni
of the Harmattan Workshop; prominent artists (Uche Okeke, Olu Amoda et al)
along with a sizeable collection by the master printmaker himself.
“We don’t just limit ourselves to what is locally available
alone; we get the best from elsewhere as well,” he explains. Where original
artworks are not available, their prints are shown. The Niger Delta Cultural
Centre displays prints of Susanne Wenger’s Osun Grove sculpture, Yeye Mopo:
“This is our lady who just died – fantastic!” he says of the work. A wall
section has photographic reproductions of German printmaking, Cezanne and Henry
Moore: “To get the pieces is expensive, but the photography of them is an art
in itself.” Perkins Foss’ exhibition of Urhobo art, ‘Where Gods and Mortals
Meet’ is also given a poster display. When we come to a 1972 picture of The
Ovie of Orughworun, we see the connection between the many adornments worn by
the subject and Onobrakpeya’s installations. The artist readily concedes the
connection, saying, “I love this [image]. Some of this has reechoed in my work.
This is installation in itself; different things put together can become art.”
Aside from hosting workshops, “The aim [of the Niger Delta
Cultural Centre] is to create a gallery for contemporary art. You don’t have to
go to a museum in Lagos or Abuja to see these things,” he insists. Also
displayed are objects that are fast becoming relics, including: instruments and
utensils from bygone eras, finials for staffs used by the Ogboni cult and other
totems. “We are losing so much of our material culture. We collect these things
not just for fun, but as a record, to remind people.”
The perennial artist
Art historian Dele Jegede has said of Bruce Onobrakpeya, “He was
the curious wanderer, the quiet but discerning inquirer who participated in Ru
Van Rossem’s printmaking workshop in Ibadan in 1963 and latched upon a medium
that suited his spirit.” The experimental artist incorporates car and computer
parts in his work. He explains, “From childhood, I’ve been fascinated with the
inside of an engine. People don’t see the engine, it’s covered up. But the
inside of an engine is beautiful.”
When someone observes that ‘Skyscraper’, made from engine parts,
is futuristic, Onobrakpeya replies that such works are only futuristic in the
sense that, “In our environment, people don’t appreciate these things.” He is
attached to them all the same. ‘Akporode Shrine’, his plastographs first
exhibited in 1995, take their inspiration from traditional shrines. Onobrakpeya
says, “In Yorubaland and Edo, the art of making a shrine is aesthetic. The
priest derives pleasure in putting these things together.” In performance mode,
he picks up a ‘fly-whisk’ art-piece from the Akporode Shrine installation and
swishes it about. Seeing a camera, he puts down the whisk, joking that, “They
will call me Baba Olorisa!”
We pass the ‘Jewels of Nomadic Images’ installation inspired by
Fulani herdsmen and the Opon Ifa (divination board), and proceed upwards to the
topmost floor which contains massive paintings by Onobrakpeya. The print-works
echo strongly. “The paintings come out of the prints,” he explains. “The prints
become studies and the paintings come out of them.” But even a master
printmaker has his limitations; most of the paintings here have never been
exhibited. “They don’t’ see me as a painter,” he says.
Into the future
Asked about the preservation of art in the non air-conditioned
rustic atmosphere of the centre, Onobrakpeya replies, “They preserve as well as
anything preserves in this environment, humans, trees… We have a problem with
white ants; we are always working to drive them away. We have a problem with
the weather. But it is all part of the process. White ants, weather; they
create patina.”
At the end of each workshop, Onobrakpeya and his helpers ask
themselves if they should go on or fold up. “The answer is: continue, because
we are doing a good job. Since we started, we now have about three people who
have [initiated] foundations that run workshops,” he said, citing Peju
Layiwola, copper repousse artist Bola Oyetunji and leather man Obi Leda (Obiora
Onuoye). Proof that BOF’s work is relevant, Onobrakpeya argues. “People have
participated, they’ve gone from being just small artists to being recognised
artists. The local people [and those] elsewhere now accord some respect to art,
because of this place.”
As Bruce Onobrakpeya, 77, heads downstairs in his labyrinthine centre built
for art, the questions inevitably turn to what will happen to this place when
he is no longer around. The master printmaker says those who come after him can
do as they please. He spreads out his hands as if to encompass all the artworks
and declares, “I have lived my life with them, gone through the process and I
have found it meaningful. If future generations don’t think so, I don’t care.”
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