JONNY'S ART REVELATION IS APOCALYPTIC

Jonny Dwek is a jack of all trades and masterful curator of an ‘Art Revelation’ cryptically entitled ‘The End is the Beginning’.

More than a mere art exhibition, Dwek has designed something more like an autobiographical essay etched on land that he swears is no more than an acre, just next door to Heminway’s Hotel in Karen. The visual ‘essay’ is made up of several separate installations composed of either sculptures, (from both West and East Africa), paintings, photography, and architecture, or film, hand-made books, and posters challenging institutional religions. He even makes room for a mini ‘Guest artists’ exhibition including artists whose works he supports, like Paul Onditi, El Tayeb, Sophie Simpkin, David Roberts, Anthony Russell, Jjuuko Hoods , Jemma Davies, and one by Dwek himself. He also includes works by his children, Zack, 18, and Coco, 14, both of whom live with him in the magnificent tree house that he built himself, complete with a sauna, two bathrooms, fire-place and flammable makuti grass-thatched roof.

Each one of his installations reflects facets of this multifaceted man so that as we moved from one montage of his ideas to the next, we are made to feel that we have traveled far with this man, mentally, visually, emotionally. He has taken us around more than an acre of his life. We have traveled far and wide, to West Africa where we sit on stools sculpted as animal fetishes in mahogany, and back into the 18th century when Romanticism flourished and Dwek commissioned Jemma Davies to paint a quasi-copy of a lion mauling a maid similar to an iconic one from the 18th century. It’s the first painting you see upon entering the exhibition, and it’s disquieting. But Dwek says he wanted to convey the way humanity (represented by the maid) is being finished by Nature (represented by the lion) rising up in rebellion against humans who, in their foolish pride, have made a terrible mess of the planet.

Moving on to the present, Dwek has an installation of photography and fine art about the first house that he built. It is a sprawling seven-bedroom home, complete with swimming pool and other amenities. Dwek calls it Shangra la and says it’s for sale. Then comes his Africanah exhibition filled with the West African sculptures and ancestral totems which probably should be returned to their owners. But the traders who are exhibiting them today do too good a business to give them back to their rightful owners. It’s nearly time to go back to ‘the beginning’. But if we’d stopped Dwek’ tour then, we would have missed what lay behind the vine-filled wall concealing possibly the biggest achievement of a man who isn’t just an art collector and occasional painter. He’s also an architect who devised and built this fully-featured tree house that has allows him to stay with his kids who each have a tree house of their own. Theirs are connected to their dad’s place with bridges which are also ‘baby-proof’ since Dwek has a newborn child named Cosmos who comes and goes with his mom who normally stays in a grounded house just a short walk away.

Also a few steps away is the Guest Artists exhibition, including another one by Jemma Davies which she entitles ‘Apocalypse’. It’s one more that Dwek commissioned especially for this show. It’s also another one forecasting the worst outcome for humanity if they don’t change their ways and fast. Now that we have taken a moment to explore Dwek’s amazing tree house, he disappears briefly and then returns with two leather-bound books that he has made and filled. “I’m working on the binding of the third edition of the book I’ve entitled ‘’Letters from the Grave,” Jonny tells BD Life. Why the title? we ask. “Because no one will read these letters until after I am dead,” he tells BD Life with hard-core honesty. But what a treat they will have since Dwek has been documenting his everyday life with paintings and collage meant to illustrate what’s happening with him at the emotional and social level. There is also lots of poetry and quotes from wise men and women he admires. In addition, Dwek has made films that one can find on YouTube. And on Instagram, you can see the history of how Dwek built the ‘Kenya Tree House.’

Ultimately, Dwek has forewarned us of the coming apocalypse. Now we have no excuse: either change our ways fast or we are finished as a species. Sad but true.

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