Often the persona, or work outlasts the human behind. This series pounders multiple technical and conceptual questions while pondering stardom. The subject are recognisable faces yet the image creation format presents an overlapping and blurring with just enough detail for the photos to evade proper definition. By presenting these images the artist seems to seek to protect the vulnerability of the individual within yet confirms their legacy.

Popular logic tells us that celebrity has short lifespans while stars more lasting lives and can end up as instruments of myths and legend. They are born and made, they flare and they die out. Society today carries a constant obsession with celebrity yet the concept itself has hardly benefited from the advantage of longevity. The star machine shoots out its fortunate disciples who receive adoration often centred around the less fundamental parts of themselves.

Pier 70, building 6 is a 512 feet long, 72 feet wide, and 52 feet high structure, with corrugated metal siding and a gable roof, which occupies a total of 37,128 square-feet. It is a disused warehouse. The building was used for storing materials used to outfit ships. Each of the bays have, over the years, been covered with Graffiti. These photographs taken in 2002 show the happy marriage between street art and abandoned structures.

The world exists in mostly in binaries, even the tools of perception becoming largely reliant on ones and zeroes. Image capturing and presentations, between those stages is the process of manipulation, returning to the ones and zeroes to tamper and correct, change representation and present the results. Transformation delves into the coding behind photographs. By distorting the pixel balance through re arranging and replacement the resulting visual information shifts.

Pixelated Ensemblage is a foray into the forensics of image making. A pixelated image usually carries negative connotations but distortions can be avenue to shift context. By expanding or reducing images, then displaying them in multiple forms we are given, a chance to peer behind the veil and rebuild. Or leave as be. Pixelated Ensemblage destroys and arranges the results of the destruction.

The series bends a viewer’s focus.  Repetitions are forced instructions, inflections dictate the tone of our attention. Look, again, and then again, see? The frames are composed of the city’s odds and ends compiled into familiar fragments. Out of order can be another way of hinting at a second viewing. A frame full of things to pick apart and put together with no regard for orientation. A modulation of any visual preconceptions.

Drive by offers documentary lens on the cityscape and the cogs that contribute to its process. It is a voyage into average, the city residents translated from statistics on paper into living forms in various states of leisure and activity. The technique is self-selective emphasizing and de-emphasizing parts of the portraits equally. Take a walk around the city and the result becomes the Drive By series, many of things one sees before blinking and finding the next frame.

Eyo the series expands on the hybrid concepts. Eyo, a masquerade is something more than human and advertised as something to inspire and awe. Through photo manipulation techniques the masquerades are portraits rendered within a garish backdrop, hints are thrown at their possibility of possessing more celebrating tradition as contemporary culture.

The series Egungun invites the exploration of myth and legacy. They emerge once every while travailing the city with their handlers.  As masked beings, they are equally invisible yet unavoidable to the eye. They offer an invitation of appreciation and thought. These relentless supporting characters have survived through oral tradition into a visual one celebrating tradition as contemporary culture.

A Durbar parade invites the gaze of the public and proclaims its attentions. The process is an exercise rooted in history and borrowed tradition. Like Carnival, the series functions as beautiful candids that highlight the visual spectacle of such an occasion. It celebrates tradition by presenting it with a contemporary eye

Carnivals are competitive visual feasts, no matter where in the world they occur. Elaborateness is the order of the day that has become synonymous to fun. The series takes a documentary approach then escalates it to a state of frenzy. Celebrating tradition as contemporary culture. The backdrops and other visible signs of nonlife are stripped of their own colours and identifiable traits, reduced, forgettable almost. The subjects are captured as sharper than real life, to emphasize the scale and feel of the occasion. Celebrating tradition as contemporary culture

The group of images in this series seek to make a singular statement about tradition and modernity. They provide a contemporary veil over that of tradition and lift heritage towards the contemporary zeitgeist

The city is relentless in providing information. Often masked within the mundane is the chance for deeper interrogation and exploration. Fabric of the City is a feast. A series of image explosions where the pixels conflate into familiar souvenirs of the city; a moving bus, a landmark, the view from above, and eye on the people. Presenting multiple perspectives within the singular view.

Etu (Indigo), Sanyan (Sepia), Alari (Burgundy) were the founding colours used to dye the Aso Oke fabric in the times before technology. The Aso-Oke is designed for multipurpose wear. These natural dyes/founding hues represented the divisions of ancient society some of which still echo in modern statehood.  In the series, the figure is duplicated and represented across the hues. A conflation of ancient and modern, with pop culture echoes. Making a modern idealist presentation of history and tradition.

The series is an exploration of transition centered on the art of forgetting.  The eyes though emphasized, appear to have attenuated the heads, as identity fades. Any attempt at respectability after all memories are notoriously faded is susceptible to bias and human interpretation. The heads split, and unite, pieces in the process of conveying an occurrence. Memory is never singular, once it becomes a fixture of the past it loses solid footing and blurs.

A city is a collection of fascinating identities. This series re-addresses the archetypal portrayal of the city as bleak and unintimate.  By blurring and resetting the backdrops the subjects draw attention to themselves without encroaching on the original context. They are viewed as whole subjects without the taint of negative stereotypes. Almost life like, they represent snapshot moments amidst the frenetic pace of city life. In Lagos, energy is a thread weaving through the cities inhabitants as they hustle for social ascendancy and economic relevance. The contours of their aspirations tuned to the background as multicolour blurs, indistinct but effective. Stirring observers to their state of isolation

This series captures marks of interference through transformations processes to create a re-representation. Multiple images sourced from familiar scapes are intertwined digitally to generate extreme visual metaphors in a presentation of form akin to glitches; Glitches tend to have extreme results, by creating a reorientation of form often perceived as unstable, transitory or fragile within a set framework. In isolating the conditions that glitches possess and transferring them to the process of image creation, the series become shifted forms, the impetus being a re-examination of how things are viewed.

“Icons of a Metropolis” offers a non-judgmental look at 20 character archetypes – they are the ICONS. They are a creative force, a self-organizing and self-referential manifestation of the zenith of urban survival. Visually they can be considered as memes of the city of Lagos. The body of work tells a visual story of these character architypes (ICONs) in a collection of montages, portraits and mosaics. The icons are visual memes of Lagos. The residents of the city all know them, and take them as part of the cityscape. Despite their persistent presence, they remain barely noticeable. Individually, they dissolve into the urban melting pot of the city. Together, they weave their own fabric and create an urban mythology that is distinctly Lagosian. Taken separately, each of these “icons” tells us a personal story. Together, they give the story of the metropolis.

In this series of 80 environmental portraits, the paradoxical traits of social networks, globalization and issues of identity are explored. The work take the form of a hypothesis by giving visual reference to a thematic question: “What if we change the environments in which street people from Lagos appear, and put them in ‘other’ streets of ‘other’ metropolises? Would this allow us to begin to see with “other eyes”? It draws a clear reference to Marcel Proust quote: “The only true voyage… is to possess other eyes, to see the world with the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred worlds that each of them sees, that each of them is”.

There are historically significant artefacts which help to preserve and perpetuate a nation’s history and heritage, then there are specific contemporary art pieces which help to interpret current culture (the zeitgeist) and to shape tomorrow’s culture. The two rarely exist within the same ontological frame, however the series “Yesterday, Today” offers much promise. In turning artefacts of Nigerian heritage into contemporary art objects the series offers a veil of luxury over another of traditional mythology wrapped up in a shroud of colonial history. These pieces have a layer of diamond dust applied on a photomosaic of gem stones as the mechanism to rediscover historically significant Nigerian artefacts housed in museums

The urban spaces of Lagos provide the raw materials for the transfigurations in “Megalopolis”. Using techniques of long and mixed exposures to create images that function like micro-movies – the pieces present inherently static images with a layer of dynamism with an embedded notion of movement. They are assembled multiple exposures of photographs to create futuristic hyper realities that are almost dream like in nature. Appearing like a hectic dystopian landscape they however, manifest a calm contentment at the same time. The repeated imagery of buildings, cars and roadways echo the constant activity in the city, appearing both disordered and intriguing. The images translate actions of the city’s inhabitants and highlight spectacles of the unceasing urban transitions that is the City of Lagos

After dark images capture the allure of Lagos at night displaying a mystic labyrinth of beauty and the unknown. Familiar landmarks are transformed into ethereal compositions; the mundane night lights become an integral part of the scene conveying a serene burst of vivid colour. As the sun goes down on the city a different kind of beauty is revealed, where temporary structures take their place as landmarks; street, vehicle and artificial lights make their bid to become stars with each giving off its own unique colour, turning the mundane to the ethereal. The images in this series are captured with patience and composed to reveal a Lagos that is enchanting, barely noticed and rarely seen.

This is an appropriation series, it uses imagery produced by mass culture media is a necessary tool to explore the archive of historically significant events and its relevancy to contemporary culture. Interrogating the archive explores images mainly from Nigeria’s colonial history, the images that surround us, to help make sense of history and ground contemporary visual culture. It re-contextualises or appropriates the images and turns them into fragments of tiny squares (as if they were trace memories). This act of fragmentation suggests a fading away of colonial memory, however the images selected also point to the reality that the legacy of Empire remains deeply rooted with its iconic imagery. As many of the images shown in this series where commissioned by the State, in another time with another reading, can be view as propaganda media. The work thus touches on ‘Cultural’ appropriation in relations to both colony and colonizer but also in terms of the flow. The work thus, touches on problems of authenticity and appropriation; of historical past and present; of colonial legacy and the fragmentation of memory

Out of the brutality of war comes this simple gesture of reflection, remembrance, and commemoration. The series, explores the intricate relationships of nations at war or in conflict, the coalitions they form through allegiances and the cost in human lives lost. The works are made up of flags arranged in a cascade of concentric circles, resembling the form of mandalas – a spiritual symbol representing the universe or a microcosm of it. They are made either as parings showing both the insurgent and the belligerent sides of the conflict or as singular constructions with both warring factions. Each piece showcases nations who cooperate in the military, diplomatic, or intelligence campaign along with those who fight or fund the war efforts of one side of the other. Flags and conflict pieces cover a range of conflicts from WW1 to present day conflicts like Nigeria’s internal struggle with the “Boko Haram” insurgency

The inspiration for this series stems from blending the colours of the three traditional Aso Oke fabrics to derive a unique colour spectrum. The dichotomy of tradition vs modernity is very much at play with these circular compositions. These contemporary pieces consist of a series of concentric circles that traverse the terrain between cloth and art, motif and object. Allowing the geometry of the circle to provide autonomy for the array of vibrant colors. Through the use of programed lights, an active colour changing light effect is added to the works. This allows colour, as the fundamental ingredient of the work, to be maximised by the interaction of technology with tradition, and light with form – creating a hypnotic optical effect where the eye enable to rest, is diverted from one area to another.

A crisscross pattern of horizontal and vertical stratifications of colours make up Weaves. The reference for Weaves is the traditional Nigerian fabric; “Aso Oke”. The stratification motif of the fabric has been transformed into an expressive art form. The colours are digitally stitched into weaves to create a variety of designs in horizontal striations, as if produced on a traditional loom. These designs are in turn enhanced through the addition of texture and depth. They are then digitally interwoven like traditional weaves, to create the final pieces. Embodying striking juxtaposition of colour and contrasts; the outcome are pieces that are physically powerful with an array of intense, vibrant and energetic colour.

The art of the game has its roots in warfare. Omar Khayyam, used polo as a metaphor for God’s dominion over life, he wrote: “In the cosmic game of polo you are the ball. The mallet’s left and right becomes your call. He who causes your movements, your rise and fall. He is the one, the only one, who knows it all.” The images in this series provide form to these poetic words, showing movement and providing a backdrop of the ball in play in a range of electrifying colours.

The deeply meditative images in this series are devoured of social or cultural references beyond colour and form: they are instead simple compositions of blended colours that aim to provoke or suggest an association with other senses or cognitive pathways: the viewer, in reaction, may hear sounds, or feel a sensation or smell certain scents as is typical with the perceptual condition of synaesthesia where stimulation of one sense triggers an automatic, involuntary experience in another sense.

Horizontal stratifications of vibrant colours make up Stripe and Weaves. Though suggestive of the hard-edge works produced by post abstraction practitioners of the 60s, it is distinctly Nigerian in its intention, source reference and approach. The source for Stripes and Weaves is the traditional Nigerian fabric; “Aso Oke”. The stratification motif of the fabric has been transformed into an expressive art form. Simulating the three traditional dyes used to create this cloth; Alaari (a rich red color), Sanyan (a sepia brown color) and Etu (a dark blue color); these source colours have been combined and blended to create a distinct colour spectrum of innumerable colors. This spectrum delivers the array of intense, vibrant and energetic colour hues used in the series.

This series investigates portraiture from a multifaceted perspective. It creates thousands of miniature views of the portrait subject. Each view provides the viewer with an alternate focal point, it also acts as a tool to imply that the subject themselves are staring directly back as the viewer. This tension between viewer and subject creates a conversation of sorts addressing omnipresent surveillance systems that potentially make all vignettes capturable. The series creates an imagined snapshot (stop-frame) of a hyper-portrait in which each image fragment of the subject is perfectly alone, individualized and visible. However, the totality of views maintains a distance between subject and viewer. Available as Lightbox and Diasec pieces

Photograms are traditionally made by placing objects onto photosensitive paper and exposing to light. However, this series experiments with folds and shadows of figures cast onto themselves. This series constructed digitally, simulates the qualities of Photograms. Using graduation of colour, subtle changes and mapping transformation the information in areas of the photograph alter other areas to produce the effects of camera less photography. The final prints produced are enigmatic with a hint of ephemeral other worldliness.

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