I’ve remarked before that looking at an artist’s sketchbook is an intensely personal thing and can be as intrusive as rummaging through their underwear drawer. However, every so often we’re presented with one – sometimes, I suspect, highly edited – and the invitation should feel like a privilege.
This has plenty of hallmarks of authenticity, not least in the page numbering. However, every good exhibition should be curated and we’re entitled to suspect that those fluffs and mis-steps that add nothing to the conversation have been removed. Try-outs, variations of approach and discontinued starts, they’re something else altogether and we don’t mind a few of those.
Spiral bound and presented with no more text than forewords by Pete Brown and Ken Howard (those being the kind of circles Adebanji moves in these days) and an introduction by the artist himself, this, as a whole, is a piece of art in itself.
You can read it as simply as an exhibition – being a sketcher, you’re not really going to ask for more from Adebanji than sketches. However, the sheer heft and volume become something else. It’s hard to put a finger on what that is, but I think I’m going to settle for “variety”, maybe also “humanity”. Adebanji is at home in crowds and these pages are nothing if not heavily populated. There’s a wealth here of faces, poses, expressions and situations. You don’t need to know who the people are or always what they’re doing. They’re studies and deserve – demand – to be studied themselves.
If you’re coming at this to learn, then marvel at precisely that cornucopia of material, at all those ways to represent human beings at work, rest or play, at the sheer inventiveness of the observation that captures them. You could also use this like one of those manuals of poses that were all the rage a few decades ago. Those were reference books, but this adds a pleasant and valuable edge of creativity.
Yes, to be here is a privilege, so take advantage and be exhilarated.
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