By Editor
VETERAN artist and architect, Elder Demas Nwoko, will unveil a book on his critical writing to the general public entitled Concrete Thinking. It’s published by New Culture Publications. The event is scheduled ‘Design Week Lagos’ on Sunday, October 23, 2022, at Konga Place, 4 Oba Elegushi Road, Off Lekki-Epe Expressway, Ikate, Lagos. Time is 4:00pm. The event will be chaired by the Fadesewa of Simawa, long term associate and collaborator of Demas Nwoko and former Director of Lagos State Council for Art and Culture, His Royal Highness, Oba Gbenga Sonuga.
A statement by the trio of Joseph Moemeke, Chibu Oloyebua and Ayodele Arigbabu said, “In seven decades of active participation in Nigeria’s arts, design and culture spaces, Demas Nwoko’s critical interventions have been strident and consistent. His new book, Concrete Thinking, has been in the works for as long as he has been active, being the summation of his writings and thoughts on various concerns within the domains his work has straddled over the years.
“Nwoko should need no introduction – a consummate artist, cultural producer and designer, whose life mission has been for real independence in Nigeria’s journey as a nation state, as expressed in the definition and redefinition of her national orientation through her cultural output. Nwoko’s generation it was who were handed the nation as young adults and had the first go at shaping her as they deemed fit right from the decade of the nation’s independence from colonial rule.
“From his trajectory through the Nigerian College of Arts Science and Technology, Zaria (now Ahmadu Bello University) where he studied Fine Art and contributed as a leading light in one of the most significant art movements in Nigeria’s art history – the Natural Synthesis movement – driven by the so-called Zaria Rebellion, to his illustrious multidisciplinary career as a painter, sculptor, set designer, lecturer in dramatic arts at the University of Ibadan, and subsequent robust output as an architect and builder, his contributions to nation building through his creative output and his philosophies, as concretized in his signature philosophy and practice under the New Culture brand, has been well documented over the years, in journals, magazines and festschrifts, but is being brought together in a comprehensive tome for the first time in Concrete Thinking.”
