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 at Harvard University, Unilever and the National Portrait Gallery London. In the mid-1980s, the artist exhibited in the ground-breaking 'Creation for Liberation' series of group exhibitions which was organised in Brixton, South London by Linton Kwesi Johnson and his colleagues in the Race Today Collective. Kelly's work has also been shown at the Studio Museum, New York [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800E3DC103EF937A15753C1A961958260 nytimes.com] ] and the British 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 with Africa and the African Diaspora, such as 'The Lost Queen of Pernambuco' 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]