It will all be about watercolour at the Spring edition of The Content Exhibition put together yearly by Adam & Eve Homeware.
The third edition, The Content which will open on April 1 and run throughout the Easter month will feature a top range of artworks that use watercolour as a medium at the flagship store of Adam & Eve Homeware 8, Isaac, John Street, GRA, Ikeja, Lagos.
Adam & Eve started the series mid-2017 with The Content and later showed The Content – Harmattan Edition at the same venue later in the year. The third edition is focusing watercolour as a medium that the exhibiting artists hope to bring back to the fore of art appreciation.
Olu Ajayi, Ini Brown, Tayo Adenaike, Sam Ovraiti, Lekan Onabanjo, Tunde Soyinka, Kehinde Sanwo and Victor Obasuyi are the master watercolourists of The Content -Spring Edition show.
“We started The Content series exhibitions last year, with the focus on creating art appreciation to thrive in Ikeja – outside the Lagos/Victoria Islands axis,” CEO, Adam & Eve, Modupe Ogunlesi stated “Ikeja is the capital of Lagos State where so many activities in business happen regularly, and art appreciation can be promoted here as well.”
Ogunlesi who has been running Adam & Eve for the past 20 years disclosed that The Content art exhibitions have been generating young collectors in just less than one year.
The curator of the exhibition, Lekan Onabanjo said the coming show is aimed at keeping the watercolour medium alive among artists and patrons. “We are showing watercolour because the medium is gradually dying,” Onabanjo stated. “We have chosen the select masters who have made marks in the medium over the decades.
Ovraiti argued that watercolour has not disappeared as believed by some people, but suffered lack of materials. “Because of the high cost of material like the paper – which doesn’t allow for errors, most artists stay away from watercolour,” he added.
Adam & Eve space will display 10 works from each of the seven artists.
“There is always a collector for every medium,” Onabanjo said. “You will be surprised that people have been waiting for watercolour exhibition such as this. Watercolour serves the richness of having so many works on your walls. But on collector apathy, the bigger the size.”
Apart from the technical challenge in controlling the flow of the medium on paper, there is also the limitation in size. But a few artists know how to find their way around the size challenge, as “Professionals like us go beyond the regular sizes of small to much larger ones,” Ovraiti, whose career spans three decades, boasted.
Despite the complexity of controlling the flow, and size challenge, artists of The Content – Spring Edition assured they have the experience required to make a great come-back for watercolour.
“The content of an artwork should be the value, not the size,” said Kehinde Sanwo.
With the new set of artists showing at Adam & Eve, the list keeps growing. Dr. Bruce Onobrakpeya, Kolade Oshinowo, Raqib Bashorun, Zinno Orara, Duke Asidere, Fidelis Odogwu, Juliet Ezenwa, Francis Uduh, Ibe Ananaba, Damola Adepoju among others also showed in the first two editions.
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