Tuesday Talks at the Whitworth Art Gallery: Samson Kambula 15/01/13
Artist and author Samson Kambalu has co-curated the exhibition Tattoo City: The First Three Chapters with Castlefield Gallery’s in house curator Clarissa Corfe. The exhibition includes Kambalu’s work interspersed with a selection of art inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s esoteric philosophy of freedom – anthroposophy, as well as newly commissioned and existing works by guest artists including Joseph Beuys and Jochem Hendricks. Kambalu’s first book The Jive Talker or How to Get a British Passport, published by Random House, Simon & Schuster and Unionsverlag in 2008, is a memoir of his upbringing in Malawi and the influence of Nietzsche in shaping his own art practice and quasi-religion ‘Holyballism’, centred around a sculpture of football wrapped in pages of the Bible. Born in Malawi, Kambalu has exhibited widely, including exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, Tokyo International Art Festival, Brooklyn Institute of Contemporary Art, New York and the Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig. He is currently a PhD candidate at Chelsea College of Art and Design.
http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whatson/events/tuesdaytalks/
Samson introduced his philosophy to creating conceptual art including his background growing up in Malawi. One key reference to his 2003 work Holy Ball, a football covered in pages from the Holy Bible, is the footballs children make out of plastic bags. For his first residency, Samson took a collection of these handmade footballs from his neighbourhood in Malawi in a suitcase to Amsterdam.
Western philosophy played an important role in his upbringing, questioning everything about the world around him. Nietzsche and Bataille were cited as particularly important philosophers, concerning excess that has influenced Samson’s practice. “We need more useless things,” Samson declared; more art and less computers, less airlines, roads and planes. “Art should create wastage,” he claims; i.e. art should not be divisive/instrumental towards economic/regeneration ends, as it is often demanded by politicians and public grant bodies.
Samson also mentioned categories in his talk as something particular to Western ideologies. This necessity to compartmentalise everything in order to make sense of the world is something he finds quite strange coming from Africa.
More info: http://www.youtube.com/user/Holyballism
