13 Mar 2018

Thapong Visual Arts Centre was a place to be this past week as Wilson Ngoni hosted his Relentless-solo exhibition which is scheduled to go on from March 9-24.

He is regarded as one of the best painters of his time and probably the best to ever come out of Botswana. And according to coordinator of Thapong Visual Arts Centre Reginald Bakwena, Ngoni is a gem at what he does and artists can learn a lot from him.

 Bakwena said it was important that the audience was able to talk to artists about their work on the opening night; hence he encouraged people to attend.

“I invited a number of schools, colleges and universities to attend the opening so that students who are doing courses that require interaction with a living, working artist can use this occasion to interview and create contacts with artists for future research,” he said.

Bakwena said Ngoni is a beam of hope and inspiration to many artists.

He further indicated that Wilson has hosted more than 20 exhibitions before and his execution of ideas makes people follow his interpretation and also his art encodes values and ideology.

He went on to say that Wilson was a well-established painter who was using art as a supporting base for something meaningful to him. “His work is informed by social and ideological process,” he said.

 “In the past, Wilson used his creativity to touch people’s hearts and feelings. For example, during his previous exhibition of Dream, Wilson created a painting titled Screamer which provoked and challenged the audience to think of the past. This type of artwork becomes memorial,” said Bakwena.

Speaking on the current work, Bakwena said one realised that the artwork was characterised by beauty, spectacular form, status and taste.

“But the purpose, which is the subject matter at hand is crucial because it carries the weight of the message,” he indicated. Bakwena further said being an artist was a true gift or calling from God and it is a beautiful feeling with a deep inner drive.

“It is a feeling that enables an artist to be creative, to develop and grow in his/her field. Artists who are looking for motivation, inspiration to push their techniques further could use this exhibition as a source,” he said.

Bakwena encouraged artists that it is important like any other sector to build an audience and network because artists did not only create artworks for themselves but want other people to engage with their work.

“Artists need to engage with their audience and provoke conversation. Let us strive for perfection for art production as we move forward having celebrated 50 years of Independence,” he concluded.

For his part, Ngoni said,“I am not a man of many words. I was not blessed with a talent for speaking but rather I am an artist and the brush is my spoken word,” he said. 

Ngoni’s work is rife with a hallmark of solid dots of color semantically emblematic to his artistic objective of contributing to the general happiness of humanity. 

“Etched onto the profile of every face I witness different emotions- disappointments and dissatisfaction, happiness and love; all what humanity lives alongside constitute the story of life. It is the pressure to be happy that makes us unhappy,” he said.

Speaking on what inspired him to get into visual arts and painting, Ngoni said his inspiration, encouragement and energies were drawn from his life experiences, environment and memories of his past life and childhood experiences.

“It has been such a long and rugged road, tough and rough. From Gabane CJSS, 1997-99, I moved to Moeding College, 2000-2001 and my art was faced by big academics complication, where I had to paint at the same time attend school, leaving my art with little time. 

Even though I did all subjects in school, I did not really like academics in the sense that they wanted to take me from my brush. I resented this and opted to stay away from school as much as possible, and then I had a chance to paint fully upon completion of my form five in 2001. 

I grabbed the opportunity with both hands and painted on without returning to or continuing with the academic stream.  I learnt that I only needed paints, brushes and canvases to survive regardless of who said what.  I took the risk and painted onwards,” said Ngoni. 

The Relentless exhibition mainly comprises works from the wilderness.  There are elephants, zebras, wild dogs, wetland birds and there are saltpans with rolling dark clouds.

Other paintings are portraits including one titled ‘Ancient’ and another showing a man in a mokoro. ENDS