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Art: Exploitation of the Internal Minds at Fairfield Halls, Croydon (From Croydon Guardian)

6:30am Thursday 27th August 2009

By Graham Moody »

When Ruth Bircham exhibited her art at Fairfield Halls last year it was the start of a 12 month journey that comes full circle next week. The artist is back at the venue with her new exhibition, Exploitation of the Internal Minds, but this time she is not alone. "It's a bit like how we live in London with different walks of life trying to live, work and play together." Ruth Bircham

The success of last September led to the formation of Kreative Minds International, a group of artists wanting to tour the world. "We want to take it worldwide," says the 43-year who studied at Croydon College. "The group came about from speaking to someone online and he said he wanted to take his art worldwide and I just thought that was a good idea. "For this exhibition we have artists coming together from different countries and doing pieces based on the environment. "It all took off from last year's exhibition that I did by myself. "I took it to Nigeria and it went really well with exposure in the national newspapers and interviews on television too. "It was quite something."

The other artists involved are Ruth's daughter, Ruby Martins, her brother, David Bircham, Nigerian Ayoola Omovo who is flying in especially, Tayo Shoyemi and Pat Mears, who got involved having seen last September's exhibition. Most of the art on show is abstract and Ruth explains the philosophy behind it."We are educating people by providing information from other individuals’ experience’s and interpretation," she says. "Showing them that it is possible to move forward positively and override any discriminative or racial barriers. "When I went to Nigeria there was about three or four different cultures all living together in the same city and helping each other out. "It's a bit like how we live in London with different walks of life trying to live, work and play together.

"I wanted to bring that culture back here and converge it with ours in paintings and the plan is now to go somewhere else and bring back the same thing." Sun Lounge, Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, September 1 (6pm to 9pm), 2 to 4 (10am to 10pm) and 5 (11am to 5pm), free. Call 020 8688 9291 or visit kreativeminds.synthasite.com to confirm your free entry.

Kreative Minds exhibition in Croydon

NIGERIA

Tuesday, 25 August 2009

Adventures into Internal Minds

BY TAJUDEEN SOWOLE
THREE artists — Ruth Bircham-Shoyemi, Tayo Shoyemi and Ayoola Odupitan —whose drawings have found a home in Kreative Minds, will be showing at Fairfield Halls Theatre, Park Lane, Croydon, United Kingdom from September 6 to 9. Under the Theme, Exploitation of the Internal Minds-2, it is the second show by the group, which had its debut in February at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos, when Bircham-Shoyemi visited Nigeria. In their first show, the artists, in their diverse thoughts, engaged the canvas to explain effects of social changes on the society. The UK show tries to bridge the gap between cultures and countries; most importantly, to show how this development has affected individuals. Affection between mother and child — during the nursing period — is captured by Tayo Shoyemi in his piece. While explaining the virtues of breast-feeding, the work reveals one of the feeding techniques by women in the work. Odupitan, who has remained consistent in her print-like monochrome, offers a balance in cultural study. Two contrasting images of hairdo: a dreadlock and an island-clean-shaven head, express her thoughts on cultural diversity. Bircham-Shoyemi keeps her viewer thrilled in her depictions of nature and its beautiful sceneries, which appear to be her strength. Her multi racial environment oozes in Rising Above, acrylic on canvas, with much emphasis on the thick lip. This, she explains, is deliberate “to show viewers that our culture is no less superior to that of any other race. My future plans are to continue to exhibit and take Exploitation of the Internal Mind to the international stage and back to Nigeria, where the idea originated. I want to educate people around the world about Nigerian history and culture.” FOR Odupitan, the formation of the group is based on the need to educate the youth. It is believed that many young ones are suffering in silence because they feel that the only way to be heard is by committing crime or taking part in anti-social behaviours. Solution, Bircham-Shoyemi stresses, is not by ignoring it, but confronting the situation head on, using the past as a stepping stone to move forward. “We want individuals to be aware of each other’s experience, and how each of them feels history has affected them living in today’s society”, she argues. Bircham-Shoyemi, who studied Access to Art and Design at Croydon College, said her experimentation of bringing the outside environment into art began thereafter. Renaissance, Impressionism, Abstract Realism and Corporeality are the schools of art that have influenced her works. In 2001, she got BA (Hon) in Fine Art Combined Media, which she said strengthened her. She also had a stint in printing, film editing, using various computer softwares, and business studies. Her work was shown at the Parfait Gallery at Croydon College in 2001 and 2002, and also was involved in a group show in 2005. Odupitan graduated with Bachelor of Art (Education) from University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State in 2006. Majoring in painting, She has a number of art shows including Art Expo Nigeria and Society of Nigerian Artists, (SNA) organised October Rain to her credit. Tayo, in addition to his Diploma in Textile Art and Design, has participated in several exhibitions, including Art Expo Nigeria. He is also a member of the new art group, Art Zero.

 For Bircham, a taste of  home canvas from The Diaspora

BY TAJUDEEN SOWOLE

WHEN her mates were all about, moving around, Ruth Bircham was dumb until she was five. However, what she lost in speech, was gained in art. In fact, when she was two, she started making impressions with drawing, as through this medium, she expressed her needs.
  Today she is full of determination to take her art beyond the borders.
  Shortly after her debut show at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos; Bircham, a Briton, who traced three generations of her parental history to Nigeria and Cuba, shares her thoughts on socio-cultural value among others issues
  The show titled Exploitation of the Internal Minds was this year’s curtain raiser at Terra Kulture, and it also served as the maiden showof a three-man group that is into arts activism, Kreative Minds, which Bircham is a member. The other two members, who featured in the show, were Tayo Shoyemi and Ayoola Odupitan.
   Bircham’s concept, most times, is a blend of surrealism and abstraction. Two of the exhibits, Shattered Lives and Fallen Dreams, take the viewer into what appears to be like the deep blue sea. And as the viewer follows the work, opaquely rendered, babies are noticed, crouched under the wave-like current. But the droplets of water in the composite raised curiosity, leading to the connection between the crouched position of the babies and what earlier appeared to be the bottom of a sea.
  
THOUGH surreal, the composite is actually Bircham’s impression of “the loss of a child and someone’s baby through gun crimes.”
  In Bircham’s work, her multi-racial environment is unavoidable in the piece, Rising Above, acrylic on canvas with much emphasis on the thick lip. This she says, “is deliberate to tell viewers that our culture is no less superior to that of other races.”
   The lips again become an outlet for the artist to express her view on relationships in the acrylic piece, Cold Kiss. When lips are so close as she depicts, a relationship is established, isn’t it? She however cautions that relationships crumble as a result of false love or coldness.
 As relativity becomes a shield for some people in the debate of what constitutes indecent body exposure, particularly of the female gender; Emotions, painted in 2006 unmasks the real feeling behind the so called dressed to kill trend. A difficult feeling to manage, she says, as a result of the “unwanted gazes, becoming fearful; you are sexualised due to media misrepresentations of the body.”
  Art, for Bircham became a calling from birth: “I was told by my mother that I was still-born for 30 minutes or more, and she felt it could affect my speech in some ways, so, she took me to many voice specialists, who told her that I would speak whenever I am ready. I was mute until I was 5.”
 She recalls, “my mother said from two years, I began to draw things to get her attention, so she started to buy me drawing and colouring materials to keep me away from her things. My step-grand parents who were artists themselves also brought drawing materials for me and told my mother that I was very talented. At16, I started buying my materials from the money I got from my work as a sign painter and a landscape gardener while studying Art and Design in Brixton College in 1982.”
 
COMING to Nigeria must have been a dream fulfilled as she enthuses, “I have always wanted to collaborate pieces of art with Nigerian artists, and capture the essence and culture of Nigeria.”
 “My future plans are to continue to exhibit and take Exploitation of the Internal Mind to the international stage and back to Nigeria, where the idea originated from. I want to educate people around the world about Nigerian history and culture,” she added
   In September, the group will travel to the UK to continue spreading the gospel of Exploitation of the Internal Mind project.
 Renaissance, Impressionism, Abstract Realism and Corporeality, she declares, are the schools of art that has influenced her work.
  In 2001, she got her bachelor’s in Fine Art Combined with Media, which she says strengthened her art.
  Her work was exhibited at the Parfait Gallery at Croydon College in 2001 and in 2002, and also at a group exhibition in 2005.

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Bridging Cultural Barriers

By MARY EKAH, 02.13.2009

Viewers last Saturday at the Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos had a glimpse of what would best be described as the expressions of the minds of some  African artists at the flag off of “Exploitation of the International Mind,” an exhibition by a group called the Kreative Minds. “We are out to bridge the gab between cultures and countries by bringing ethnic minorities together in the sense

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