Big Trouble In Little Lagos.

Nigeria is, by some margin, the most populous country in the entire continent of Africa. Lagos, Nigeria's former capital, is the most populous city in the whole of Nigeria (it's got more than three times the amount of people than call the second city, Kano, home - and the capital Abuja has a quarter the number of citizens). Only Kinshasa, the capital of the Democractic Republic of Congo, beats Lagos when it comes to population sizes in Africa.

Peckham doesn't have quite so many people but it is home to one of the largest Nigerian diaspora communities in the UK. To the extent that it is sometimes known as, though not by me - until earlier today, Little Lagos. The South London Gallery's LAGOS PECKHAM REPEAT:Pilgrimage To The Lakes is a free exhibition, spread across two venues, that brings together the work of Nigerian and British-Nigerian artists to look at issues of migration, pilgrimage, and identity and though some of the works are difficult to read or interpretate, they are - for the most part - both interesting and aesthetically pleasing.

Christopher Obuh - No City for Poor Man (2014-ongoing)

 

As you go in there's a little bit of history of Lagos. How it was given its name in the 18th century by the Portuguese (Lagos is Portuguese for 'lakes' and Lagos is surrounded by water), how it became a significant port for the transatlantic slave trade, and how Britain took possession of the city in 1861. Also how Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960 and how migration between the two countries has increased over the last six decades.

Nigerians first started arriving, in significant numbers, in Peckham in the 70s and 80s following an economic crisis in Nigeria and then more arrived in the 90s, escaping civil unrest. Today more than 12,000 people of Nigerian heritage call the London Borough of Southwark home.

One of whom is Yinka Shonibare. His Diary of a Victorian Dandy series, two of which are in this exhibition, shows the artist as a black dandy who has found himself moving in upper class, society circles. It's Shonibare's way of questioning our assumptions of who does and who doesn't belong in stately homes and polite society and, as the brochure rightly points out, it owes no little debt to William Hogarth's satirical social commentary.

Yinka Shonibare - Diary of a Victorian Dandy, 19:00hrs (1998)

Ndidi Dike - Deciphering Value:Economic Anomalies and Unequal Dependencies in Global Community Trade (2023)

Ndidi Dike's lengthily, and drily, titled piece is a bit harder to get your head around. There are images of Rye Lane (Peckham's market heavy - and phone repair heavy - high street) but also of Lagos markets like Balogun, Ladipo, Katangua, and Yaba and there are credit cards, computer keyboards, and paper money lying around. It seems to be all about commodity and capitalism and possibly also about global inequality but it's as tricky to work out as it is enjoyable to look at.

Emake Ogboh (who has provided a soundtrack to the exhibition which can be heard in each room - it consists of Lagos soundscapes, traffic, chanting, street vendors etc;) has made a work called No Food For Lazy Man which appears to be a pile of crates full of beer bottles.

It took the pamphlet to explain to me that the beer, Orbit, is brewed in south London and, apparently, celebrates migrant resilience (I suppose beer is quite often used during celebrations) as well as being made with a mix of English hop varieties and Nigerian alligator pear, calabash, nutmeg, and sugar cane. A true collaboration but what's with the title? Well, I learned that that is a popular Lagos saying that captures the hustle and bustle of the megacity.

Emeka Ogboh - No Food For Lazy Man (2023)

Temitayo Shonibare - I'd rather not go blind (2023)

Temitayo Shonibare's I'd rather not go blind is a twenty-six minute film of several commuters on the Overground travelling from Dalston Junction to Peckham Rye. It's a journey I have made many many times and, more often than not, I've been like the majority of commuters in this film. Either looking at my phone or reading. The chief protagonist of Shonibare's work (if you can call them that), however, simply spends the whole time stroking the huge mop of ginger hair that completely covers their face thus denying them the advantage of sight. Shonibare's thinking behind this work was that public transport, not least in large cities, involves an unspoken set of social rules and norms and she was trying to break those norms in an interesting way. Of course, it being London, it seems nobody gives her unusual creation a second look.

Viktor Ekikhamenor's Cathedral of the Mind looked interesting. Woven from mass produced rosary beads, Ekikhamenor's cathedral has a suitably imposing 'door' and when you look behind it there's a row of Ibeji ('twins' in Yoruba) statuettes. The Yoruba, it seems, see twins as divine and special people who bring prosperity to the household they are born into. I've got several friends who have twins. Maybe I should ask them if that's made them wealthy!

Viktor Ekikhamenor - Cathedral of the Mind (2023)

Viktor Ekikhamenor - Cathedral of the Mind (2023)

Christopher Obuh - No City for Poor Man (2014-ongoing)

Christopher Obuh's series of large photographs, No City for Poor Man, looks at the building of the planned city of Eko Atlantic in Lagos State. It's been dubbed the 'Dubai of Africa' and that's exactly the double edged sword you might imagine. Eko Atlantic has been built using forced eviction and the demolition of informal settlements. Poor people are being kicked out of their homes to make way for rich people. There is also a widely held belief that Eko Atlantic is terrible for the climate at a time when the climate is of greater concern than ever before.

Money, of course, wins out over life - as with nearly everywhere else in the world. Lagos Studio Archives' Archive of Becoming is a useful counterweight as it shows actual people from Lagos. Many of whom have now left their home city and moved to London.

Lagos Studio Archives - The Archive of Becoming (2015-ongoing)

Lagos Studio Archives - The Archive of Becoming (2015-ongoing)

Yinka Shonibare - Diary of a Victorian Dandy, 14:00hrs (1998)

Temitayo Ogunbiyi - You will find Lagos in London living (2023)

Temitayo Ogunbiyi's sculpture looks, at first, like one of those games where you have to prove a steady hand and avoid buzzing the wire (what are they called? they must have a name) and, indeed, the sculpture is described as interactive. Children are encouraged to play on it but I'm, sadly, no longer a child and I didn't have a handy child with me so I just looked at it somewhat bemused.

It looked nice though. But Abdulrazaq Awofeso's Avalanche of Calm was even better. In fact it was probably my favourite piece in the entire show. Awofeso made the work shortly after moving from Lagos to the UK and it appears to be an architectural model of a part of Lagos with some nice fluffy blue clouds hanging over it. I enjoy architectural models (most of the time - as long as I'm not ripped off paying to see them) and even though this one has a cemetery feel about it I still liked it.

Abdulrazaq Awofeso - Avalanche of Calm (2022)

Onyeka Igwe - No Archive Can Restore You (2020)

Which is not something I can say for Onyeka Igwe's rather dull film, No Archive Can Restore You. Rooms full of dust, cobwebs, and old film reels, there should be something 'hauntological' about it all but it's just too slow, too dry. There was a fairly big crowd in there watching it though so my disappointment with the work seems to put me in the minority.

Chiizii's installation contained a warning that some of the work referenced colonial times (which it did) and that there was nudity (some topless women) and it explores the Igbo diet in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial times. As, I assume, a way of exploring how colonialism affected not just the food eaten by the Igbo people but also the culture. Of course, you'd need to read a book to truly understand that but Chiizii's colourful and warm work at least pushes the viewer in that direction.

Chiizii - Research Room, Chapter 1. Nni Bu Ogwu (Food Is Medicine) (2023)

Chiizii - Research Room, Chapter 1. Nni Bu Ogwu (Food Is Medicine) (2023)

The final work I took in was rather good too and not just because I got to sit in a very comfy armchair as I took it in (more of this in art galleries please). Behind a coffee table loaded with soft drinks bottles and hot drinks cups, saucers, and teapots there was a screen showing Adeyemi Michael's mother riding a horse down Peckham's Rye Lane dressed in traditional Yoruba ceremonial attire.

It celebrates, as well as anything else in the show, the experience of Nigerians living in Peckham and as I watched it I thought to myself that if I was to see Adeyemi Michael's mother riding a horse down Rye Lane it'd barely warrant a second glance. Rye Lane is quite lively. I left the gallery, and walked home. As I walked down Rye Lane, past Khan's Bargains as seen in Michael's film, I didn't see a horse rider in traditional Yoruba ceremonial attire but I breathed in the vitality of Peckham (an area I have come to love deeply over the years) and thought to myself just how much the Nigerian community have given the place. There's no big trouble in Little Lagos but there's lots of big love. Pass me the jollof rice and a glass of palm wine.

Adeyemi Michael - Entitled (2018)

Adeyemi Michael - Entitled (2018)