- George 'Fowokan' Kelly
George 'Fowokan' Kelly (Born Kenness George Kelly in Kingston
Jamaica ,1943 ), is a visual artist who lives in Britain and exhibits using the name 'Fowokan' (a Yoruba word meaning: 'one who creates with the hand').Collections and Exhibitions
Examples of Kelly's work are held in many public and private art collections, including that of the
W. E. B. Du Bois Institute atHarvard University ,Unilever and theNational Portrait Gallery London. In the mid-1980s, the artist exhibited in the ground-breaking 'Creation for Liberation ' series of group exhibitions which was organised inBrixton , South London byLinton Kwesi Johnson and his colleagues in theRace Today Collective . Kelly's work has also been shown at theStudio Museum , New York [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800E3DC103EF937A15753C1A961958260 nytimes.com] ] and theBritish Museum , London [ [http://mylondonyourlondon.com/?p=161 mylondonyourlondon.com] ] .Education
Kelly is a largely self-taught artist, who has been practising sculpture since 1980.
Concepts
The primary motifs of Kelly's practice are naturalistic portraits, such as his bust of
Mary Seacole [ [http://www.maryseacoleappeal.org.uk/news.htm. maryseacoleappeal.or.uk] ] . But, the artist also introduces forms that allude to the artist's fascination withAfrica and theAfrican Diaspora , such as 'The Lost Queen ofPernambuco ' which, according to 'Nerve' magazine 'has a beauty that overwhelms' [ [http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/misc/reviews/hawkins_co.php Nerve Online] ] .References
External links
* [http://fowokan.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=1 Online Gallery]
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