However, the artist, for one, doesn’t take rubbles and throwaway stuff by the corner as useful wastes.“Artists are responding to these concerns by recycling and repurposing wastes to address and comment on issues around them,” reveals Mathew Oyedele, curator of Recycled Matter, an ongoing group show of exploratory works by Samuel Nnorom, Yusuf Durodola, Konboye Eugene and Chukwuemeka M. Osisiego at the Alexis Galleries, Lagos.
Patty Chidiac Mastrogiannis, founder, Alexis Galleries, also harps on the importance of growth in an ecosystem, which explains why the gallery is presenting Recycled Matter, “as a window into the relevance and significance of artists to respond to issues in their immediate environment, and by extension, issues around the world.”
Exploring the techniques of stitching and pasting flip-flops, Konboye puts up portraits of children to reverence their innocence, simplicity and unpolluted thoughts. Here, Konboye connects the process with the subject, as he relates the complicated process of creating art to training children. Here, Durodola assembles automobile and electronic gadgets as well as polythene that are either sourced from the environment or obtained through the exchange to negotiate the relationship between humans, spaces and waste.NNOROM hails from Isiukwuato Council, Abia and was born in Jos North Plateau State, on October 24, 1990. He discovered his talent at the age of nine while assisting his father in his shoe workshop, where he started making life drawings of customers that visited the shop.
As a student of Auchi Polytechnic, Konboye was greatly influenced by the teachings of Kent Onah, who encouraged the exploration of unconventional materials and the recycling of solid wastes to manage environmental degradation.