Ade Adesina LG takes us behind the scenes of his prestigious summer exhibition at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
It was a big surprise and a great honour to be awarded the 2023 Mario Avati Printmaking Award at Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris last year. I’d heard about this award before, but it went off my radar until early last year when a friend, Florence Poirier-Nkpa, a French artist, brought it to my attention again. Florence and I met at the art fair in Nigeria in 2018 where we spoke about collaborating on a few projects together. Since then, we’ve worked on several projects and still have a couple that are ongoing today.
It was a hectic time at the studio, but I was happy to have made a note of the application deadline on my calendar. I managed to get my entry in on the last day. The application process was done online, and it was pretty straightforward, and I was able to upload up to 10 prints. I included a few of my large prints and a couple of medium and small ones. My entry included linocuts, woodcuts, and etching. A few months later, to my delight, I received an email from the Academie to notify me that I had been shortlisted for the second round from over 150 entries worldwide. I quickly followed up on the next stage, which involved sending five physical prints from the entry selection to the Academie for a second round of judging.
No words can explain my joy when I received an email confirming I’d been awarded the prestigious printmaking award. I was then invited to Paris in October 2023 for the award ceremony at the Academie. It was a day of multiple award celebrations and presentations with people from other creative practices. Under a magnificent dome at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, the orchestra, the choir, and the composer brought the event to life and to a whole different level. It was a great honour and experience both to witness the occasion and receive my award. I was also shown around the building and the gallery where I would be having my solo exhibition. This provided me with time to think and prepare for what I wanted the exhibition to be.
My selection process for this exhibition was to go through the prints I’d made over the decade. In the end, I narrowed my selection down from over 80 prints to 64. There was a lot of communication between the Academie and myself for images and promotional materials like photographs and essays. The introduction for the exhibition was written by Professor Lennox Dunbar RSA who was one of my tutors at art school, informal photographs were taken by Lee Garson and photographs of artworks were taken by Neil Corall. The logistics of framing all the pieces wasn’t straightforward but with the help of Castlegates Frames’ Graham Fowler in Aberdeen, we got there in the end. The hardest part was trying to organize the shipment of the exhibition to Paris from Scotland. Unfortunately, due to Brexit and the paperwork now involved in transporting art through the borders, I couldn’t get any art couriers to take on this task. Luckily, my friend John Lawrence, whom I’ve worked with for a decade, took on this enormous task. He spent weeks on paperwork, and we had to measure, weigh, label, and value every piece independently.
All this was happening in the middle of my residency at Edinburgh Printmakers where I had to commute between Aberdeen and Edinburgh almost every week to produce work for my current exhibition “INTERSECTION” which opened on July 26th and is still running til the 10th of November 2024. We rented a van from the company in Aberdeen, and the next morning, having loaded all frames the previous day with the help of Vladas Laukys and Willem Boon von Ochssee, John Lawrence and I took on a two-day journey to Paris. There was a bit of delay with paperwork and checks going through customs at Eurotunnel, but it was nothing extreme, and we finally got the van on the train and proceeded to cross the border. A few hours later, after a little bit of traffic, we arrived at Académie des Beaux-Arts. To my delight, the first thing I noticed on the magnificent building just across the river from the Louvre were two big banners, one with the image of my work, the title of the exhibition, and my name boldly written on it, and the other banner with the information and dates of the exhibition. It felt so surreal, and I finally realized that this was happening.
With the help of the Academie’s amazing team, exhibition hanging contractors, and curator, we managed to hang almost all the works. The hanging took 3 days. To be having an exhibition of this size in such a historical building, well, I couldn’t have been happier. The reception and the turnout for the preview evening were great and I was happy to have my family and some friends there with me. I also launched my recently published book “The Griot” containing my work from over a decade, which was well received. After the preview, there were a couple of days to rest and some interviews with newspapers, magazines and bloggers. Then, I had a couple more days to explore Paris with the family while preparation for the Olympic games was going on, before heading back to the UK.
My journey through my creative career has not been smooth sailing, there have been ups and downs but moments like this make it all worth it. The exhibition was popular with over 6000 visitors in one month. There were also lovely and kind comments in the visitors’ book. After the exhibition ended on the 7th of July, John had to drive from Aberdeen to Paris to collect the exhibition and bring it back to the UK, going through the whole paperwork process again. This exhibition has made me feel like I’m telling the right stories, ones that the public is interested in. I hope to continue making this work and telling stories which encourage people to think about the past, the present, and the future.
Ade Adesina LG 2024
adeadesina.com
Griot at Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris
CURRENT EXHIBITION:
INTERSECTION: Ade Adesina
27 Jul – 10 Nov 2024
Wed to Sun, 10:00 – 18:00.
Edinburgh Printmakers
Castle Mills
1 Dundee Street
Edinburgh, EH3 9FP