Event: Exhibition: Intransigence

Artists:  Joel Utuedor and  Okey Ibeabuchi

Dates: 9 May – 23 May 2016

Venue: 166 Plymouth Grove, Ardwick, Manchester M13 0LB

Tel: 0161 2228688

Hours: Open daily Monday – Friday:  11am – 6pm, Saturday: 12noon – 5pm, Sunday: 1pm – 5pm

Website: www.chuckgallery.com

Entry: Free

For further press information and to request images please contact + 44 (0)161 2228688 or email chuckgallery@outlook.com

Note to Editors

About Joel Otuedor:

Joel Utuedor generated controversy among a group of private collectors in Nigeria with a number of interesting curvaceous nude paintings. Referencing the erotic as well as the physiognomy of the female body. These works were sharply qualified and famously criticized as voyeuristic disorder, carnal, obscene, lecherously explosive and pornographic. But for Otuedor, the works were an ongoing representational ‘monographs’ on the debate of gender and identity. Portraying unclad women on canvas was for him a strategy for mapping his perspective as he essentially presents them through an intimate private space. In one of the works titled Beauty Room (2012), Otuedor exaggerated the proportion of his subjects to heighten the sense of connection between the viewer and the painting.  Away from nude pieces, some of Otuedor’s realistic life-size portraiture offers a close study on the politics of gender. In 2011 Otuedor was part of 12 Nigerian artists featured in the exhibition: ‘’Art by Contemporary Masters’’, organized by Tribesart Gallery at Waterfront Restaurant, Lagos. Joel Otuedor studied Fine Art at the Auchi Polytechnic, Edo. He lives in Lagos and works from his home.

About Okey Ibeabuchi:

The 2008 group exhibition: ‘’Arts & Objects’’ at the Henri Moweta Gallery, Lagos, displayed works by Okey Ibeabuchi noted for their massive relief surfaces. Perhaps encouraged by ap-proving response from collectors following his previous shows in Abuja and Lagos—between 2010 and 2012 he churned out paintings that were even more tactile.  It was as though the artist were sculpting on canvas with encrusted surfaces built with a complex network of jutes, caps of empty colour tubes, cones, plastic bottle covers, found rubber slippers, and decaying woods. From then onward, these largely waste materials, became recurring elements in his art. Ibeabuchi’s background as a graphic artist also influences his use of colours. Early paintings by the artist predating his low relief works, permeates an enviable range of luminous spectrum. But his more synthetic use of colours and divisionist approach draws critical attention to the brilliant pointillism features in his works. Especially his remarkable monumental body of works relying on carefully made tiny dots to create forms of glamorously decorated women.