Imagined Steel

Sokari Douglas Camp’s life-sized steel figures and Gelede masks tell rich stories or make shrewd and often humorous observations on the beauty and ugliness of life. Although trained in the UK, she has been described very much as still an African artist whose work is inspired by her Kalabari heritage. Several of her large steel sculptures in the exhibition capture the movement and humour of traditional Kalabari water-spirit festivals in Nigeria’s Rivers State where she was born, whilst others address recent events in Nigeria’s turbulent history.

Other works show people going about their business doing ordinary things: a young mother with a buggy, shoppers at the market and a couple on a motorbike. Her work is a unique hybrid, drawing on both her life in London as well as tradtional and contemporary African culture.

Imagined Steel follows Kumasi Junction as the second in a series of three exhibitions of work by contemporary artists from Africa. It was initiated by the Lowry, Salford.