By Hauwa Ali
Wasiu Arowolo, another ibadan resident is famous for his artwork made from waste materials and his pieces are highly sought after.
Wasiu Arowolo: ‘Nature had spoken to me’ – from tin cans to works of art
The son of a motor mechanic, Wasiu Arowolo had always been drawn to art. In his community in Ibadan, art was not viewed as a serious profession, but he pursued it anyway, gaining an apprenticeship at a popular gallery and studio called Topfat while other friends went off to college.
Arowolo says he could not always afford the tools and materials he needed to do the work – his family did not approve of his choice of study and did not support him. So he frequently found himself sitting under a tree, watching his fellow pupils at work outside.
One day, while he was waiting under the tree, a friend who was passing by suggested he “listen to nature”. “Look around you, there will be something to work with in nature,” the man said.
What Arowolo really started to notice, however, was how the rubbish and waste strewn around the streets was affecting the natural world and one day, in 2012, he found himself at a rubbish dump where he began picking up tin cans.
From these cans, he created a butterfly. He found this helped to relieve the anxiety he had been feeling about his job and about the environment around him. That was the beginning of his work as a waste artist.
“I was still trying to sort out one of the butterfly wings at my boss’s studio when a woman who was a customer at the gallery asked how much I was willing to sell it for, and she paid for it immediately.” This first payment – 25,000 naira ($65) gave him the boost he needed to continue with his craft.
Later that same year, he won the Life in My City art competition in Nigeria, winning 50,000 naira ($131). The theme of the competition was Being Young and he produced a waste-oriented project, titled Junior – a large pair of slippers made with cans, with a small child’s leg in it. For him, it symbolized the idea of young people trying to fit into their parents’ shoes, at an age when they are trying to make something of their lives.
These days, he uses metal in all of his artwork – mostly finding it on the streets – and has his own studio.
“I have lots of metal in my studio. Some pieces have been sitting there for eight years. I don’t draft in a sketch pad before coming up with ideas for my work. So, each of the metal items calls me by the day to say, ‘just use me’. I do what comes to my mind the moment I pick any of them up,” he says.
Nowadays, Arowolo’s work is highly sought-after. Far from the boy who could not afford tools to learn about art, he is now comfortably off.
“Seventy-five percent of my works are sold before completion. People pay ahead for my work. Go to some of the top-notch galleries in Ibadan; my works are there. So, I can tell you that acceptance of my work has been tremendous.”
Ibrahim Gbadamosi, 41, uses waste to make items of furniture and artworks, such as ‘About Time’, a piece made from discarded wood, metal and plastic which depicts a truck on the US flag, dumping weapons.
Ibrahim Gbadamosi: I’m Using waste design to make a political statement
Gbadamosi,says his art, which is made from all sorts of different kinds of waste, often gets a mixed reception. Some love it; others hate it.
“You will find people who will close doors in your faces, and you will find people who will open doors to you.”
In his house, which doubles as a gallery, visitors will find a sailing ship made from a tree trunk; a map of Africa made from bottle tops and foam slippers; a beaded curtain made out of strings of bottle caps.
His gallery is a stone’s throw from his family home, where he grew up, in an upper-middle-class area of Ibadan. His love for art began at the age of six when he would visit a local art gallery with his sister.
Despite this early love for art, however, he says his family did not view it as a good career choice, so he studied Geology at the University of Ado-Ekiti in Ekiti State, graduating in 2003.
Gbadamosi was expected to graduate and find a good job in the oil and gas sector. But even after he did that, art remained a hobby. He spent his weekends busy, painting on canvasses, visiting galleries.
He says his family believed his love of art would remain just a hobby until his first solo exhibition in November 2011 at the African Foundation for the Arts in Lagos. His work ended up on national TV and he successfully sold some pieces from it. After that, he resigned from his job and followed the call of art completely.
His family thought he was mad to leave a good, well-paid job and refused to support him. The money he made from the exhibition soon ran out. “I could not afford paint, so I went into recycling fully. I started to make use of carpenter’s waste, bottle caps and plastic.”
Gbadamosi says whenever he went around picking up these items, people would make fun of him.
These days, in his gallery, the personal is interwoven with the political as he uses his art to make bold statements about the state of the world today. In his Politics of Violence series, he draws attention to gun violence in the US, for example. In another piece, titled About Time, a truck attached to the US flag dumps weapons.
“There would be less fatality if people who want to harm others didn’t have access to weapons at all,” he says.
With clothing materials his late mother gave him, he has made an iron table wrapped with damask cloth. With an old rubber suitcase, he has made a chair. He has given new life to old wood discarded during a renovation of his home in his London Series: a red, wooden London bus that doubles as a dining table set; a pair of Royal Guards that serve as lamps made from ice-buckets.
“I wanted to make functional art that was themed,” he says. “The common thread that runs through it is that the subjects are London icons.” London, he says, is a place his parents lived for a time and from where they would bring souvenirs for the rest of the family – it holds a significance for him in memories from childhood.
Making functional items and works of art from waste has its challenges. Bottle caps, for example, are tricky to use. “You want to do small pieces or tight-curved lines, but they are not easy to manipulate.”
The work is physically challenging as well. “When I am working with bottle tops, it doesn’t exactly sit on an easel, so I have to work with it on the floor and now I have constant back pain.”
Despite the challenges, Gbadamosi says he will continue working, as there is so much waste to work with, and so much happening in the world for his art to speak to.
“I want to always do pieces that can stand the test of time and be the best in the world.” He said.
