Gallery B57 is set to open the doors of her new space for its inaugural exhibition, ‘Ghosts of Bar Beach’. The exhibition will open on October 28, 2018 and end November 11, 2018 from 10am to 6pm daily. The inaugural exhibition, a solo show by Ade Adekola, provides a post-documentary perspective to the history of Bar Beach, examining, how contemporary artists deal with the concept of nostalgia and memory.
“Our inaugural exhibition explores nostalgia and memory, ‘Colour, the Colourful and the Spectacular’ at 57 Bishop Oluwole, Victoria Island, Lagos. Bar Beach conjures up several aspects of nostalgia from the 1500s with the naming of its environs as ‘Lago du Curamo’; to the 1800s with the British bombardment of Lagos; up to the 1970’s where it was a place of spectacle of death.”
Bar Beach’s long history as a beach, was truncated by the development of Eko Altantic City. The remastered images in this exhibition are presented with their electrifying colours to provide access to moments of nostalgia and memories of Bar Beach moods lost for good.
Ade Adekola’s body of works is defined as ‘Post Documentary’, because of the long-time interval between shooting the images and creating the remastered works. The images do not document specific events but memories of a colourful past. Each image comes alive and creates a spark of resonance, sometimes in a slow meditative and contemplative pace.
Ade’s symbolic gesture of layering his images, creating ghosting and the use of vibrant colours fit with the idea of time, nostalgia and loss that are consistent with the history of the Bar Beach.
Ade Adekola is an internationally-recognised, award-winning Architect turned conceptual artist. He works primarily by exploring the possibilities offered by digital image making. He spent several years in Silicon Valley where he witnessed the dawn of the digital transformation of photography. At this juncture, Ade started to explore the transformative power offered by innovations in photography. His enthusiasm was captured, and his experimental photography practice was born. Moving back to Nigeria in 2005 his creative emphasis shifted, as he started to concentrate on creating elevating images that reframe and redefine the Nigerian Cultural narrative.
As an image maker, photography is more his medium than it is his craft. His practice is aimed at conceiving, orchestrating and delivering images so charged that one may experience them as objects. Typical in his work is the use of vibrant and at times electrifying colors.
His photography can be considered as performative; it refers to and creates vibrant memories of a time, questioning the boundaries between individual and collective experiences. His images are considered to elevate the visual plateau of Nigerian photography.
