Fowokan | |
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| Born | Kenness George Kelly (1943-04-01)1 April 1943 (age 82) |
| Education | Self-taught |
| Known for | Sculpture |
| Notable work | Say it Loud (2001),Property of a Gentleman 1807 (c. 1996), |
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George "Fowokan" Kelly (born 1 April 1943)[1] is aJamaican-born visual artist who lives inBritain and exhibits using the name "Fowokan" (aYoruba word meaning: "one who creates with the hand"). He is a largely self-taught artist, who has been practising sculpture since 1980. His work is full of the ambivalence he sees in the deep-rooted spiritual and mental conflict between the African and the European. Fowokan's work is rooted in the traditions ofpre-colonial Africa andancient Egypt rather than theGreco-Roman art of the west. He has also been a jeweller, essayist, poet[2] and musician (a former member of the funk groupCymande in the early 1970s).
Born asKenness George Kelly inKingston,Jamaica, he migrated to Britain in 1957 and lived inBrixton,South London.[2]
He decided to become an artist while on a visit toBenin, Nigeria, in the mid-1970s. He had travelled as a musician toNigeria, where he experienced some kind of spiritual transformation or enlightenment. He returned toLondon determined to acquire knowledge of the technique ofsculpture, which he was able to find in books and through trial and error. Coming to the visual arts comparatively late in life, he deliberately chose not to be trained in western institutions, which he felt could not teach him what he wanted to know, they being too deeply entrenched in their own traditions with little or no understanding or interest in the things that interested him most – the ideas behind the art and culture ofAfrica.
The philosophical aspect of his oeuvre came with his travels through various parts of Africa, exploring the spiritual side of his ancestral home. He believes the intuitive/spiritual aspect of reality that still abounds in Africa was his art school and university. He has also written essays that have been published in books and magazines.[2]
In 2011 Fowokan featured in "Better than Good", an arts education initiative to highlight the achievements of Black artists in Britain.[3] His work was shown prominently in the exhibitionNo Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990, held at theGuildhall Art Gallery between July 2015 and January 2016.[4][5][6]
The biographyBecoming Fowokan: The Life and Works of Fowokan George Kelly, by Margaret Andrews, was published in January 2022.[7]
Kelly sees African art not as art in the western sense but as creations associated with religion, magic and ritual. The encounter between theAfrican and theEuropean has brought about deep-rooted spiritual and mental conflicts at the core of the African, along with the belief that the African is nothing more than "the reflection of a primitive and barbarous mentality". Kelly believes that art has an important role to play in the struggle to define and redefine a contemporary African world-view. In today's African artists' work, he argues, we must see the eyes and hands of the contemporary artist, looking anew, through the prism of an African aesthetic, speaking in a new world with the voices of the ancestors, voices for so long silenced; in doing so, their art will offer new generations the opportunity to look again with fresh eyes, to see themselves in new ways.
The primary motifs of Kelly's practice are naturalistic portraits, such as his bust ofMary Seacole.[8] But he also introduces forms that allude to a fascination withAfrica and theAfrican Diaspora, such asThe Lost Queen ofPernambuco — a sculpture inspired by the story of a settlement of Africans who, across the 18th and 19th centuries, escaped enslavement and lived as a community on the border ofBrazil and Dutch Guiana for 90 years, only to be re-captured due to their lack of vigilance.[4] — which, according toNerve magazine, "has a beauty that overwhelms".[9]
Examples of Kelly's work are held in many public and private art collections, including that of theW. E. B. Du Bois Institute atHarvard University,Unilever and theNational Portrait Gallery, London.[10] In the mid-1980s, he exhibited in the ground-breaking "Creation for Liberation" series of group exhibitions organised inBrixton, South London, byLinton Kwesi Johnson and his colleagues in theRace Today Collective. Kelly's work has also been shown at theStudio Museum, New York,[11] and theBritish Museum, London.[12]
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