Circle Art hosts auction with a difference in city

Kenya’s visual arts scene has grown exponentially over the past 50 years; but at independence in 1963, there were no galleries that showed African art apart from the occasional Congolese or Ugandan painter’s work.

There were Wakamba curios sold in Asian-owned craft shops, but there was no Gallery Watatu or Paa ya Paa, and it would take more than 30 years for a Kuona Trust to be born and 40 before the GoDown Art Centre came into being.

That is not to say that Kenyans were not keen to support the visual arts. The country’s second vice president Joseph Murumbi had proposed establishing a National Art Gallery at independence, but his fellow MPs had no interest in supporting his vision.

Even now as the Joseph and Sheila Collections were opened officially at the Nairobi Gallery last Monday night, the Cabinet Minister for Sports, Culture and the Arts, Hassan Wario said he would try to fulfil Murumbi’s vision to get a National Gallery approved by Parliament in the course of this year.

But he confessed there were still few MPs who understand the value (either culturally or economically) of the visual arts.

Mr Wario claimed Murumbi’s ‘problem’ was that he was ‘ahead of his time’. But actually, it only took two more years for a number of Kenyans (Hilary Ng’weno, Jonathan Kariara, James Kangwana) to team up with a Tanzanian (Elimo Njau) and a couple of Britons (Terry Hirst and Charles Lewis of Oxford University Press) to launch Paa ya Paa Art Centre in 1965.

The so-called ‘first generation’ of Kenyan artists was by then hard at work.

They included Gregory Maloba, Rosemary Karuga, Louis Mwaniki, and Elkana Ong’esa, all academically trained as well as Samwel Wanjau, Ancent Soi and Alexander Mogendi, who were all self-taught.

But they received little recognition among their fellow Kenyans back then, a situation that hasn’t changed dramatically up to now.

There are qualitative differences between then and now however. With the establishment of the Murumbi Art Collections at Nairobi Gallery, the country is closer to establishing a National Gallery than ever before.

And with the Circle Art Agency organising a regional auction November 5th at Nairobi’s new Kempinski Hotel, Kenyans will have a chance to see how a professionally-run art auction can attract collectors from all over the world.

Circle Art’s Modern and Contemporary East African Art Auction is not the first to be held in Nairobi.

There was one conducted just a year ago at the Sarova PanAfric Hotel and another held in the early 1990s at Gallery Watatu, organised by the late Ruth Schaffner.

But according to Danda Jaroljmek of Circle Art, their auction will not only be run by a professional auctioneer formerly with Sotheby’s in London.

There has been a stringent selection process whereby only what she and her co-directors Arvind Vohara and Fiona Fox consider exceptional artworks will be up for auction.

“We have sought out works by artists that we admired. But we looked for art that either hadn’t been seen before [like the Wanyu Brush watercolour] or art that one wouldn’t have found, even if he or she had gone directly to the artist’s studio,” she said.

'WORKS BY ARTISTS WE ADMIRED'

Having gotten acquainted with the East African art scene since 2000 when she arrived in Kenya to work with Kuona Trust and Triangle Trust of UK, Danda already knew many of the second and third generation of Kenyan artists, such as Sane Wadu and Wanyu Brush as well as Peterson Kamwathi, Michael Soi and Paul Onditi, all of whom will be featured in the auction.

But the auction isn’t only including Kenyan artists. There will also be works representing Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Ethiopia and even Somalia.

With 47 artworks being auctioned off, they all can be seen at the Circle Art Agency website. And in keeping with CAA’s high standards, much of the registration can be done online, but friends of the art may register on the auction night.

All the artwork will be available for public viewing from November 2nd through the 4th. The auction itself will be held on the 5th from 7.30pm.

Noting that prospective buyers will be flying in soon from Switzerland, South Korea and the UK, Danda clearly believes this auction will signal a turning point in the Kenyan art scene, giving the global community a better opportunity to connect with contemporary Kenyan art.

It will also give Kenyans a chance to see how widely East African art has come to be recognised and valued.

This story was first published in the Business Daily