Florence Wangui
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One Off is pleased to present Florence Wangui 'Bycatch' Opens Saturday 25 September - 24 October 2021
Gallery Open Tuesday through Sunday, 10am - 4.30pm Please note that masks are mandatory around the gallery. |
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About the exhibition
Statement by the Artist
Bycatch, most commonly used in the fishing industry is a fish or other marine species that is caught unintentionally while fishing for specific species or sizes of wildlife. It is either the wrong species, the wrong sex, or is undersized or a juvenile of the target species. The term is also sometimes used for an untargeted catch in other forms of animal harvesting or collecting.
My current body of work explores the analogy between fish and man. These oil on canvas paintings place man in the same habitat as the fish, faced with unseen and encroaching traps. These traps manifest in the form of social stressors related to matters like social conflicts, social changes and socio-economic pressures.
These have knitted into a 'system' that has left man threatened, vulnerable and susceptible to it. This system has trapped us, and while some escape, others are entangled, seized and reduced to bycatch to be met by the inevitable, cruel fate. Dead fish is good if edible otherwise is but putrid waste! No longer useful, man, like bycatch, has been left to his demise.
I am convinced that despite the negative impact of this 'system' being man-made, there's a need to continue seeking for solutions and independence and that perhaps, there's a need to step back and gain personal insight on these matters. That it is prudent to understand our human ecology and manage it wisely, or even seek out mechanisms that free us from psychological traps, as one thing for sure is that the system exists and man has to prove to be a survivor, to remain resilient or else become bycatch.
My current body of work explores the analogy between fish and man. These oil on canvas paintings place man in the same habitat as the fish, faced with unseen and encroaching traps. These traps manifest in the form of social stressors related to matters like social conflicts, social changes and socio-economic pressures.
These have knitted into a 'system' that has left man threatened, vulnerable and susceptible to it. This system has trapped us, and while some escape, others are entangled, seized and reduced to bycatch to be met by the inevitable, cruel fate. Dead fish is good if edible otherwise is but putrid waste! No longer useful, man, like bycatch, has been left to his demise.
I am convinced that despite the negative impact of this 'system' being man-made, there's a need to continue seeking for solutions and independence and that perhaps, there's a need to step back and gain personal insight on these matters. That it is prudent to understand our human ecology and manage it wisely, or even seek out mechanisms that free us from psychological traps, as one thing for sure is that the system exists and man has to prove to be a survivor, to remain resilient or else become bycatch.
Florence Wangui – Nairobi – September 2021
Artist's Biography
Florence Wangui is at the forefront of a new generation of Kenyan artists making a big impact both locally and internationally.
Born in 1986 in Nairobi, where she lives and works, Wangui shot to prominence with a series of charcoal drawings of chickens from her mother’s coop. In this series her dazzling formal drawing skills prevailed whilst effortlessly, she captured their varying moods and peculiar personalities.
A natural talent, her childhood drawings were seized upon by her teachers as classroom aids and she went on to complete a degree in Zoology and Biochemistry at Kenyatta University before choosing art as a career. Her first mentor was Patrick Mukabi at the GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi. He helped her to develop her formal abilities even further before she went on to refine her oil painting technique with the practicing artist Dolores Gomez.
Always adventurous in her choice of media, in 2016 Wangui completed a series of glass panels of the Stations of the Cross for the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Kericho, also making a group of sculptures in bronze for the cathedral doors.
Wangui continues to produce dynamic and exciting work, primarily in charcoal and oils and often with surreal undertones. Her work interrogates her experiences within a world that shapes and defines us all. Now recognized as an important young talent, she is collected widely at home and abroad and is included in many important public and private collections. Her work is regularly exhibited in New York and she hopes to show in Berlin later in the year.
Wangui is exclusively represented in Kenya by the One Off Contemporary Art Gallery
Born in 1986 in Nairobi, where she lives and works, Wangui shot to prominence with a series of charcoal drawings of chickens from her mother’s coop. In this series her dazzling formal drawing skills prevailed whilst effortlessly, she captured their varying moods and peculiar personalities.
A natural talent, her childhood drawings were seized upon by her teachers as classroom aids and she went on to complete a degree in Zoology and Biochemistry at Kenyatta University before choosing art as a career. Her first mentor was Patrick Mukabi at the GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi. He helped her to develop her formal abilities even further before she went on to refine her oil painting technique with the practicing artist Dolores Gomez.
Always adventurous in her choice of media, in 2016 Wangui completed a series of glass panels of the Stations of the Cross for the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Kericho, also making a group of sculptures in bronze for the cathedral doors.
Wangui continues to produce dynamic and exciting work, primarily in charcoal and oils and often with surreal undertones. Her work interrogates her experiences within a world that shapes and defines us all. Now recognized as an important young talent, she is collected widely at home and abroad and is included in many important public and private collections. Her work is regularly exhibited in New York and she hopes to show in Berlin later in the year.
Wangui is exclusively represented in Kenya by the One Off Contemporary Art Gallery
Preview of Works
Click thumbnail to enlarge and scroll through all images
Bycatch
Ghost in the Machine - new works from Wangui's previous series of paintings
Exhibition openings are usually on the last Saturday of every month, excluding December.
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