James Irabor: Quintessential Artist and Art Administrator
Uche Nnadozie
The National Gallery of Art (NGA), the apex gallery in the country for the past 30 years has produced a sizable number of seasoned art administrators. Due to bureaucracy and the syndrome of “seen but not heard,” some of these art administrators among who are professional artists, may not be well-known to the visual arts community. But over the years, they have worked assiduously behind the scene diligently carrying out the mandate and vision of NGA.
They are the unsung heroes and heroines that are engaged by NGA in launching the campaign of recognition and relevance of art and artists in the national polity. They are the ‘exhibition avatars’ and the ‘lords’ of exhibition halls. They are the unseen hands behind NGA’s numerous mega exhibition fiestas such as ARESUVA (African Regional Summit and Exhibition on Visual Arts), ArtExpo Lagos, Art Fairs, National Visual Arts Competitions and other landmark exhibitions. Their inputs also resonate In NGA’s inspiring and scholarly conferences, symposia and stampedes such as National Symposium on Modern Art and Stakeholders’ Forum among others. One of such numerous art administrators, who interestingly is equally a sculptor of note, is James Uwagbale Irabor.
He was born into a working-class family on September 14, 1962 in Ibadan, the present capital of Oyo State but hails from Irrua in Esan Central Local Government Area of Edo State. He started his formal education at the Sacred Heart Private (Catholic) School, Onireke, Ibadan between 1966 to 1974 where he obtained his First School Leaving Certificate. He then proceeded to Government College, Apata, Ibadan for his secondary education where he got his School Certificate in 1979. Having discovered his creative/artistic talent at an early stage, young James decided to receive formal training in art; he thus enrolled with the Polytechnic Ibadan between 1982 and 1984 and came out with Ordinary National Diploma. In search of professional and academic fulfillment, he moved to the renowned Auchi Polytechnic where he bagged the Higher National Diploma (HND). He crowned his quest for professional and academic excellence in visual arts by obtaining a BA and MFA in Fine Art from the prestigious Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1992 and 1998 respectively. He was also awarded the Cyprian Hejiani Prize for the best final year student in sculpture, Department of Fine Art (1992) from ABU Zaria.
After over 10 years of professional studio practice, impacting public and private engagements in the visual arts sub-sector, he decided to settle into the Federal Civil Service as an Art Administrator, Art Curator and Documentation officer bringing to bear his cognate experience to improve on service delivery and professional operations in the Gallery setting.
James Irabor, a Deputy Director with the National Gallery of Art Headquarters Abuja who recently retired from public service on attaining the mandatory age of 60 in September this year, served as the Head of Division in various professional Departments such as Exhibition Division in Curatorial Services Department and Monitoring Division in Department of Documentation and Monitoring. Prior to that he was the pioneer Curator and Head of Station at the National Gallery of Art, Enugu a zonal office for the South-East. He also headed as Curator, NGA FCT, Abuja. At the point of his stepping out, he served as the Technical Assistant to the Director-General of NGA.
In the course of his professional sojourn at the NGA, Irabor has been involved in several curatorial assignments. He has chaired, coordinated and supervised some landmark exhibitions both in Nigeria and abroad such as the maiden edition of Nigerian Visual Arts World Tour (NIVATOUR) exhibition, held in Cairo in 2010. Also, in the course of his career, he has handled both professional and administrative duties with profound efficiency and diligence.
Taking a look at his artistic/creative exploits, Irabor is a dynamic, experienced, all-round, multi-media artist whose proficiency and dexterity in his chosen career is profound and evident as displayed in all his works, research and experimentations. In his art, we see an artist who is concerned with taking a given medium and making a personal statement based on his perception, observations and response to his environment. To him, art should be a natural extension of his existence, bringing to fruition personal images, symbols and forms that most accurately express his perception of life. He approaches his works with a deliberate abandonment based on comfortable degree of technical skill, placing the greater emphasis on the impact of the completed visual image rather than the technical aspects of the process used.
He selects the rich heritage of African art with its religious, social and magical or mythical substance as an aesthetic and historical link toward speaking to a universal condition or creative environ. His art is embellished with myriads of African (Nigerian) motifs while most if not all the concepts are eclectic; an amalgam of various art styles, blended with sensibility of a matured draftsmanship, finished and patinated. His choice of creative methodology is basically sculpture with wood and metal as preferred media. Suffice to point out that Irabor’s creative process especially the multiple styles to artistic production are due to his artistic training from reputable art schools that he passed through.
Discernable in his works, is a synthesis, combining the African and western style which makes the sculptures modern yet African (or traditional) and devoid of the primitive, stereotypic and archetypal features –a reminiscence of the “Natural Synthesis” which is Nigeria’s creative philosophy. His works are expressionist and the motifs employed cut across diverse ethnic backgrounds and Art schools in Nigeria and some parts of West Africa. James Irabor is married with children.
* Nnadozie is an Assistant Director and Head of Documentation Division at the NGA HQ, Abuja.
