Ablade Glover - The Black Stars of Ghana - Art District

The Black Stars of Ghana - Art District: Prof. Ablade Glover - “Nothing structured, beautifully defined”

by Safia DickersbachAblade Glover"The Black Stars of Ghana - Art District" is a weekly video interview series that aims to let viewers experience the depth, vibrancy, beauty, vision and diversity of contemporary art produced on the African continent.
The series was conceived and shot by Artfacts.Net PR Director Safia Dickersbach via her production and curatorial platform SHOWCASE in response to the current situation in the international art market. What we call the "international art market" is in reality an area covering only the United States and Western Europe. The global art scene’s Western-dominated perspective and mechanisms make it difficult for artists from Africa to receive the attention they deserve.The first series focuses on artists from Ghana. For the background to the series, please read our interview with Safia.
At the premises of Artists Alliance Gallery, the art gallery and exhibition space he originally founded as a young art lecturer in the 1960s, and which is now located at Labadi Beach on the oceanside in Accra, Prof. Ablade Glover talks to Safia Dickersbach about his life and work as one of Ghana’s most prominent contemporary visual artists.

Ablade Glover combines a decades-long teaching career in art education -  culminating in the position of Dean of the College of Art and Head of the Department of Art Education at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi - with an even more successful career as a visual artist,  which turned him today into a kind of elder statesman for the contemporary Ghanaian art scene. During his work as an art professor, Ablade Glover recounts, he came to the conclusion that he loved the art more than the teaching, so he began to shift the focus of his activities towards becoming a full-time painter.
Red Forest, 102x102cm, 2007
When asked about whether being an artist should be considered a job or profession, Ablade Glover points out that he never felt bored, tired or exhausted while working on his canvasses, and that in his view this distinguishes an artist’s career from a day-to-day job. In a normal professional environment, people are often disaffected with their job, and complain about feeling tired from work.
Yellow Forest, 102x102cm, 2008
Ablade Glover describes himself as a contemporary artist, a contemporary African and specifically a contemporary Ghanaian artist, in contradiction to the still commonly held notion that African art has something to do with traditional masks and art forms that some Western ("international") experts call “primitive” or “tribal” art. While acknowledging foreign influences in his upbringing, Ablade Glover's body of work is characterized by an adaptation of those influences and their implementation in an accomplished synthesis with archetypal African motifs, colours and sceneries.
Market Women 122x152cm, 2008
Outlining the main themes of his paintings, Ablade Glover explains that his work is centred on “chaotic” situations in public life-like street and market settings. Locations and events that present themselves in an undefined and unstructured shape form the basis and motif of his images. “Nothing structured, beautifully defined” could be taken as a motto for his artworks, or - as the Ga people would say: "Basa basa, gidi, gidi". 
Market Hats, 102x127cm, 2008
One of the recurring themes in Ablade Glover’s paintings is the African market. In his words, the market is a "culture within a culture". The visual elements in a market as seen by a viewer looking at it from some distance are constantly moving, changing, actively and vivaciously going here and there, ephemeral and fleeting impressions that only get to a frozen standstill in the moment they are captured by a photographer. Ablade Glover, however, is not interested in capturing a snapshot in time; his intention is to visualize the dynamics of the momentary and ever-changing character of the short-lived and transitory colours and shapes of market and street scenes in paintings set at the boundary between expression and abstraction.
Red Market II 102x152cm, 2003
Another recurring theme is that of the forest, where the irregularity and the movements develop as a consequence of the wind blowing through branches and leaves.
City Demonstration (Demo) 122x153cm, 2008
The essence of Ablade Glover’s artistic motifs is a celebration of the contemporary culture as he sees and experiences it in daily life on Ghana’s streets and markets. Similarly to Wiz Kudowor, Ablade Glover describes his art as celebrating life as he sees and feels it all around him just in the very moment he depicts it in his paintings.
The People II, 102x127cm, 2008
Concluding his account of his life as an artist, Ablade Glover says that art is the only thing that takes him out of this world, his studio is the place where he can forget himself, all his worries and everything that is around him.
Red Forest II, 114x114cm, 2008


Yellow Forest III, 102x152cm, 2006