His name Omavuayire means ‘victory’ in Urhobo language. But popularly known as Jonathan Mavua Lessor, art to him simply means creativity. He should know. He has been an artist for over 25 years.
“Like I keep telling people, the art is not the drawing or the painting,” Lessor said at the opening of Vitality in diversity, his latest exhibition which opened penultimate Saturday at the Nike Arts Gallery, Lekki, Lagos. “The expression is what you see. Art itself is abstract. That’s why you refer to the works as artworks… from these works, you can begin to see the way I think, my thought process.”
At the event which was well-attended by the art community including the expatriate society, the Nike Gallery buzzed with art patrons and lovers, giving kudos to the splash of art on its walls – Lessor’s interpretations of everyday life in contemporary Nigeria. With themes ranging from romance, religion to politics, the eclectic display was just as the artist described it, ‘a visual extravaganza.’
A vast country, diverse people and culture and saddled with multiple distraction obviously informed the collection, which is expected to be on display till October 27. And with over 100 works from diverse themes, Lessor’s thought process is defiantly fresh, wild, curious, fast, tame, and furious. His displayed works touched various socio-political issues and revealed an artist with a deep reflection of his immediate society.
He captures the bustle characteristic of city life, evident in paintings such as A normal day, wheels of commerce, Market Day, Eleja (fish monger). He pays tribute to care exhibited in motherhood in works such as Burden of Mothers (i) and (ii). He features landscapes such as Deep in the Woods where the bright hues of luxuriant orange-coloured leaves are catchy, yet cool. Cityscapes are also prominent. Appreciating the female anatomy, Lessor also exhibited some semi-nudes such as Happy colours, sweet pose, Big is Beautiful, The crown of a woman, and Relaxation in which the artist brings to his canvas the tempting image of a full-bosomed woman spotting only panties and in a lying posture. In Sallah day and Argungu fishing festivals, Lessor brings out celebratory mood while in Mai Ruwa (Water seller) and Okada to the rescue, Lessor draws inference to the developmental conundrum which brought the advent of these two activities of having water peddlers and commercial motorcyclists as alternatives to the citizenry. Compiling the 100 works, Lessor said, took him two years.
Working with various media such as metal, wood, and ropes, Lessor creates harmony. In population explosion, the artist makes use of stick stubs to project a bloom. According to Lessor who also made the main metal gate of the Nike Art Gallery, diversity is a product of creation. “I want to highlight the strength in diversity,” he said, “because if we follow the rules of nature, there is harmony.”
While bright colours sort of kept a happy feeling around, the message of some of his works were dark reminders of socio-political upheavals. For one, After the Massacre, is a painting showing a heap of rubber slippers, synonymous to the arrangement of belongings of victims of a mass killings, which Lessor said, “was inspired by the killings everywhere.”
And referring to his work, Bad governance is bad news, a collage of sad and gory newspaper headlines of kidnap, fraud, and other depressing news, Lessor said; “The artist lives in the society and because we live in the society, we also get influenced by society. Power failure affects the artist, as well as lack of water. They are just like any other human beings. And sometimes, we make comments in our bedroom, everybody condemning the government – we all make political statements once in a while. I think it will be out of place if the artist pretends as if all is well.”
On thoughts he had while doing those works, Lessor said, “of course the motivation is unhappiness, sadness, disappointment that with all our potentials, we are not able to get to that point where we’re meant to be.”
Lessor graduated with a Higher National Diploma in painting from the Auchi Polytechnic in 1986. After his National youth service at the Federal College of Education, Abeokuta, he began experimenting with metals and other materials. He has participated in many group exhibitions also. And after staging his first solo exhibition titled, Consciousness of Form, in Lagos in 1998, there has been no looking back. In 20111, he staged Glimpses, a solo exhibition at Montserrat in Fort Worth, Texas. Glimpses stamped his presence on the international art scene by being the only Nigerian artist to have his works listed and published in the International Contemporary Artists, Volume iii, a yearly publication of international contemporary artists.