Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 1943 (age 80–81) Ayegbaju Ekiti, Nigeria |
| Education | Willesden College of Technology; Hammersmith College of Art |
| Occupation(s) | Sculptor, poet, painter, printmaker |
| Children | Tunde, Martin, Funmilayo, Ayodeji, Toyin, Anu, Kolade, David |
Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede (born June 1943) [2] is a Nigerian poet, storyteller and artist, best known as a painter, printmaker, and sculptor (in wood, bronze and ceramics). [3]
Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede was born in Ayegbaju Ekiti, a Yoruba-speaking region of Nigeria.
He undertook an apprenticeship with sculptor Pa Akerejola in Ekiti before going on to the Yaba School of Technology in Lagos, where he studied with Edo sculptor Osagie Osifo. [3]
In 1963, Jegede travelled to the UK, where he attended Willesden College of Technology and Hammersmith College of Art, [2] studying the decorative arts, interior design, sculpture and bronze casting.
His first exhibition took place in 1968 at the Woodstock Gallery, London. [4] In 1970, he set up a studio and foundry at Riverside, London. [5] During the following decade, Jegede's work featured on the covers of books such as Buchi Emecheta's novels The Bride Price (1976) and The Slave Girl (1977), published by Allison & Busby.
In 1977, he was among the Black artists and photographers whose work represented the UK at the Second World Festival of Black Arts and African Culture (Festac '77) in Lagos, Nigeria (the others being Winston Branch, Ronald Moody, Mercian Carrena, Armet Francis, Uzo Egonu, Neil Kenlock, Donald Locke, Cyprian Mandala, Ossie Murray, Sue Smock, Lance Watson and Aubrey Williams). [6] [7]
Also in the 1970s, Jegede was artist-in-residence at the Keskidee Centre (the UK's first arts centre for the Black community), [8] [9] [10] where he was exposed to resident and visiting artists who worked in a multi-disciplinary mode, including Bob Marley, Walter Rodney, Edward Brathwaite, Angela Davis and Linton Kwesi Johnson. In 1978, Jegede led to the founding of an initiative called the Rainbow Art Group (members included Indira Ariyanayagam, Uzo Egonu, Lancelot Ribeiro, Errol Lloyd, Yeshwant Mali, Gordon V. de La Mothe, Durlabh Singh, Suresh Vedak, Ibrahim Wagh, and Mohammad Zakir, as well as Jegede) [11] that mounted its first exhibition the following year — Paintings and Sculptures at Action Space, London. [12]
Among other exhibitions that included Jegede's work were Afro-Caribbean Art (27 April–25 May 1978 at the Artists Market, London), organised by Drum Arts Centre, [13] [14] and Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain 1966 – 1996, curated by the Caribbean Cultural Center, New York City, in 1997–98. [15] More recently, Jegede's work featured in the 2015 exhibition No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990 at the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London, [16] which is inspired by the papers held at London Metropolitan Archives of Jessica Huntley and Eric Huntley and the publishing company they founded, Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, [17] as well as its associated bookshop, where in the 1970s greetings cards featuring Jegede's artwork were sold. [18]
Jegede participated in his son Tunde Jegede's theatrical project The Griot's Tale, which was showcased in 2013 at Yinka Shonibare's studio and subsequently performed at the Africa Centre, London. [19] [20]
Jegede has eight children; five sons and three daughters including:
His four other children are: Kolade Jegede, Anu Jegede, Funmilayo Jegede and Toyin Jegede.
Into the Open, subtitled "New Paintings, Prints and Sculptures by Contemporary Black Artists", was an exhibition of art by black artists displayed at various venues in the United Kingdom in 1984.
Olu Oguibe is a Nigerian-born American artist and academic. Professor of Art and African-American Studies at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, Oguibe is a senior fellow of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, New York City, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He is also an art historian, art curator, and leading contributor to post-colonial theory and new information technology studies. Oguibe is also known to be a well respected scholar and historian of contemporary African and African American art and was honoured with the State of Connecticut Governor's Arts Award for excellence and lifetime achievement on 15 June 2013.
Tunde Jegede is a composer and multi-instrumentalist in contemporary classical, African and pop music, who is of Nigerian descent and born in England and as a child travelled to Africa to learn the art of the kora. He is a producer-songwriter and has worked across several genres both as a performer and producer. He is a master kora player, and specializes in the West African classical music tradition which dates from the period of Sundiata. His sister is Sona Jobarteh, who is the first female kora virtuoso to come from a griot family. His father is Nigerian artist Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede.
Aubrey Williams was a Guyanese artist. He was best known for his large, oil-on-canvas paintings, which combine elements of abstract expressionism with forms, images and symbols inspired by the pre-Columbian art of indigenous peoples of the Americas.
The World Festival of Black Arts, also known as FESMAN or FMAN, is a month-long culture and arts festival that takes place in Africa. The festival features poetry, sculpture, painting, music, cinema, theatre, fashion, architecture, design and dance from artists and performers from around the African Diaspora.
Bruce Obomeyoma Onobrakpeya is a Nigerian printmaker, painter and sculptor. He has exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Malmö Konsthall in Malmö, Sweden. The National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos has an exhibit of colourful abstract canvases by Onobrakpeya and his works can be found at the Virtual Museum of Modern Nigerian Art, although no exhibitions were showing as of October 2017.
Valerie Jean Maynard was an American sculptor, teacher, printmaker, and designer. Maynard's work frequently addressed themes of social inequality and the civil rights movement.
The Keskidee Centre, or Keskidee Arts Centre, was Britain's first arts centre for the black community, founded in 1971. Located at Gifford Street in Islington, near King's Cross in London, it was a project initiated by Guyanese architect and cultural activist Oscar Abrams (1937–1996) to provide under one roof self-help and cultural activities for the local West Indian community. Its purpose-built facilities included a library, gallery, studios, theatre and restaurant. The Keskidee became a hub for African and Afro-Caribbean politics and arts, and for years was the only place in London that produced black theatre, developing its own vibrant drama company and attracting both a black and white audience.
Dele Jegede is a Nigerian-American painter, art historian, cartoonist, curator, art critic, art administrator, and teacher. Jegede was a Senior Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, (1995). He taught at Spelman College, Atlanta as Visiting Fulbright Scholar (1987-1988), when he curated the exhibition, Art By Metamorphosis. Listed in Kelly and Stanley's "Nigerian Artists: A Who's Who & Bibliography," Jegede was Professor and Chair of the Department of Art, Indiana State University, Terre Haute (2002-2005) and Professor of Art at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, (2005-2010). He retired as Professor Emeritus in May 2015. Jegede is recipient of the Distinguished Africanist Award of the University of Texas. He is currently the Chairman, board of trustees of the Cartoonists Association of Nigeria (CARTAN).
Sunara Begum is an English visual and performance artist, filmmaker, photographer and writer of Bangladeshi descent. She uses installation, film, photography, live performance, sonics and text. Begum is the founder and director of Chand Aftara, a creation centre. Begum is also the co-founder of Living Legacies, a traditional music archive in Gambia and New Horizons Africa, a music and arts festival in Lagos, Nigeria.
Festac '77, also known as the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, was a major international festival held in Lagos, Nigeria, from 15 January 1977 to 12 February 1977. The month-long event celebrated African culture and showcased to the world African music, fine art, literature, drama, dance and religion. About 16,000 participants, representing 56 African nations and countries of the African Diaspora, performed at the event. Artists who performed at the festival included Stevie Wonder from United States, Gilberto Gil from Brazil, Bembeya Jazz National from Guinea, Mighty Sparrow from Trinidad and Tobago, Les Ballets Africains, South African Miriam Makeba, and Franco Luambo Makiadi. At the time it was held, it was the largest pan-African gathering to ever take place.
Armet Francis is a Jamaican-born photographer and publisher who has lived in London since the 1950s. He has been documenting and chronicling the lives of people of the African diaspora for more than 40 years and his assignments have included work for The Times Magazine, The Sunday Times Supplement, BBC and Channel 4.
Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications (BLP) is a radical London-based publishing company founded by Guyanese activists Jessica Huntley and Eric Huntley in 1969, when its first title, Walter Rodney's The Groundings With My Brothers, was published. Named in honour of two outstanding liberation fighters in Caribbean history, Toussaint L'Ouverture and Paul Bogle, the company began operating during a period in the UK when "books by Black authors or written with a sympathetic view of Black people's history and culture were rare in mainstream bookshops in the UK." Alongside New Beacon Books and Allison & Busby, BLP was one of the first black-led independent publishing companies established in the UK. BLP has been described as "a small, unorthodox, self-financing venture that brought a radical perspective to non-fiction, fiction, poetry and children's books."
ErhaborOgievaEmokpae, OON, was a renowned Nigerian sculptor, muralist, graphic artist and painter who is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern arts in Nigeria. Some of his notable works include the a bronze replica of the ivory mask of Queen Idia that was used as the official emblem of the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture and a popular painting of Queen Amina. He is also responsible for the decorations on the four entrances of the National Arts Theatre, in Lagos.
Errol Lloyd is a Jamaican-born artist, writer, art critic, editor and arts administrator. Since the 1960s he has been based in London, to which he originally travelled to study law. Now well known as a book illustrator, he was runner-up for the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1973 for his work on My Brother Sean by Petronella Breinburg.
No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990 was a major public art and archives exhibition, the first of its kind in the UK, held at the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London, over a six-month period, with a future digital touring exhibition, and an associated programme of events. No Colour Bar took its impetus from the life work and archives of Jessica Huntley and Eric Huntley, Guyanese-born campaigners, political activists and publishers, who founded the publishing company Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications and the associated Walter Rodney Bookshop.
Uzo Egonu was a Nigerian-born artist who settled in Britain in the 1940s, only once returning to his homeland for two days in the 1970s, although he remained concerned with African political struggles. According to Rasheed Araeen, Egonu was "perhaps the first person from Africa, Asia or the Caribbean to come to Britain after the War with the sole intention of becoming an artist." According to critic Molara Wood, "Egonu's work merged European and Igbo traditions but more significantly, placed Africa as the touchstone of modernism. In combining the visual languages of Western and African art, he helped redefine the boundaries of modernism, thereby challenging the European myth of the naïve, primitive African artist."
David Emmanuel Noel is a London-born painter, illustrator and designer with a career that includes working on art projects with local government bodies and charitable organizations such as the CAMBA, and the NSPCC. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, he has worked extensively with health professionals, architects, designers, and professional institutes, including the Royal Institute of British Architects, championing design quality and therapeutic benefits of art in public spaces. He was a director of the Brixton Artists Collective (BAC) in the early 1990s, established Artsway Ltd; a promotion company for visual and performance artists in the UK, and is a Co-Founder of PR and Arts Media company Occhi Arts & Entertainment, publisher of Occhi Magazine. He continues to work with other artists on collaborative projects.
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Tunde Odunlade, born 26 November 1954, is a Nigerian artist, actor, and musician known for his Batik art tapestry and designs. He specialises in textile arts, and floatography. He is a member of the Visual Artists Network of the United States of America (VAN) and a frequent participant at the National Conference of Artists, New York. He was a performing actor with the Nigeria Cultural Troupe during Festac. He lives in Ibadan, the southern western part of Nigeria.
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