KAREN COUNTRY CLUB SUPPORTS KENYAN ART

ELITE CLUB FEATURES KENYAN ART

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted January 16, 2022)

Karen Country Club doesn’t have a reputation for being an active, well-curated art gallery. Because it’s not, really. But thanks to Tom Siambey, practically all the club’s walls are covered in works of Kenyan art.

That includes walls in the foyer, conference rooms, staff offices, and corridors leading to a dining room, ladies loo, and spacious living room where a series of paintings, entitled ‘Badai ya kazi’ by Edwin Jongo are part of the club’s permanent collection.

“We showed one painting by Edwin that club members liked a lot. So they asked him to bring two more pieces based on the same theme,” Siambey tells BDLife. “After that, the club decided to buy all three paintings since they mirror what goes on in that members’ room,” he adds. 

The first one, which hangs over a fireplace, has several men casually seated with drinks to go round. The second is of a mama sitting alone reading the newspaper (Business Daily), and the third portrays two young boys playing checkers as they pass the time together.

But Jongo is just one of the 15 Kenyan artists whose works have been on display since early Decmber at Karen Club. Selected and hung by Siambey, who takes care not to call himself a curator, the works are an eclectic mix of paintings, collage, and photographs. Many of the works are painted in acrylics on canvas, although there is lots of mixed media work on display, including Jongo’s badai ya kazi..

What’s most distinctive about Siambey’s selection of works is its diversity. Some of the pieces are by better known Kenyan artists like Simon Muriithi, Mary Ogembo, Ron Enoch Luke, Kamau Kariuki, Tom Mboya, and Coster Ojwang. Others are by artists who aren’t nearly as known, but who Siambey has seen and appreciated their artistry. “I give artists a chance to exhibit who haven’t had so many opportunities to show their art before,” says Tom who has been bringing art to the Karen Club since 2016.

“Before that, I was often exhibiting Kenyan artists’ works at Village Market,” he recalls. Among the most notable names he curated back then are Peter Ngugi and Anthony Okello, both of whom are now affiliated exclusively with One Off Gallery. He exhibited works by the acclaimed Ugandan artist, the late Jak Katarikawe, and he even exhibited the art of Lydia Galavu before she became the lead curator at Nairobi National Museum.

Since 2016 he’s focused all of his energies bringing art to Karen Club where he has found a surprisingly receptive audience of mainly Kenyan art lovers. For instance, a few moments after I’d walked past Ron Luke’s super-realistic portrait of a wildebeest looking you straight in the eye, it was bought by someone who Siambey calls one of his good clients.

Apparently, this sort of spur-of-the-moment sale is not uncommon at the Club. It could be one reason why quite a few of the artists on display reached out to Siambey to ask if their art could be featured at the club. In the past, it was he, the intrepid art connoisseur, who would go trekking to artists’ studios to find new works to show. Today, he still does that but he also gets a lot more calls from especially young artists, asking if he can exhibit their art.

Among the artists whose works we haven’t seen before are Frank Langi who came straight to Nairobi from Kisumu’s Mwangaza Art Institute, Glen Ochira who’s a second year Design student at University of Nairobi, Anthony Chege whose big monochrome portrait of wildebeest during the annual Migration is another super-realistic eye-catching piece, and Shadrack Musyoka who came recently from Nakuru and quickly shared his art with Siambey.

There are also several new women artists whose art got into this show. Fridah Ijai is from Kenyatta University, Catherine Mavalya teaches at Alliance Secondary, Safiyah Shah is actually studying to be a medical doctor, and Catherine Mwangi’s ‘Faces’ greet you first upon entry into Siambey’s selective world of Kenyan contemporary art.

There is one painting in the exhibition by a non-Kenyan. Isaac Karim Wabo is actually a Ugandan. But Siambey couldn’t resist putting Wabo’s portrait of a beautiful young woman into the show. She could easily be described as an African Mona Lisa with her enigmatic smile, penetrating eyes, and the chiaroscuro lighting around her face.

There is no uniformity of quality in Siambey’s show. Some of it is brilliant, some is not. But it’s still worth coming to take a look at.