Championed Artist

Overview

Onabulé works across a wide range of media drawing on her rich Greek, English and Nigerian heritage to present us with a diverse awareness that spans history and the present whilst also looking to the future.

She expertly voyages through landscape, exploring our relationship to the natural world and our current ecological predicament.  The work portrays places and people who seem untouched, almost otherworldly, harmonious and at one with the landscape they inhabit. Onabulé draws on the depiction of people from ancient cultures, seeing humans and souls as more symbolic rather than individualistic. She expands on the idea of the everyman, of universal, collective experience across large oil paintings, works on card and monotypes on paper. Onabulé's mark marking is intuitive, depicting figures in landscapes standing, or lying, in verdant forests and scorched plains amid fronds of foliage and long shadows. There are mountains and rivers, skies and wildfires. They are romantic and dangerous, mysterious yet familiar.

 

Her works straddles longing and irony, exploring how we have lost our way with regards to our relationship to the natural world and asking questions about how we might find our way back.

Works
  • Kemi Onabulé, They Had A Message For Us, 2021
    Kemi Onabulé
    They Had A Message For Us, 2021
    Oil, oil pastel, acrylic on canvas
    92 x 76 cm
    36 1/4 x 29 7/8 in
  • Kemi Onabulé, Golden Light , 2023
    Kemi Onabulé
    Golden Light , 2023
    Oil on canvas
    61.5 x 77 cm
    24 1/4 x 30 1/4 in
  • Kemi Onabulé, Moon Shines High, 2023
    Kemi Onabulé
    Moon Shines High, 2023
    Oil on canvas
    110 x 160 cm
    43 1/4 x 63 in
  • Kemi Onabulé, She Weighs Heavy On Him, 2023
    Kemi Onabulé
    She Weighs Heavy On Him, 2023
    Oil on canvas
    61.5 x 77 cm
    24 1/4 x 30 1/4 in
  • Kemi Onabulé, Self Portrait As A Lunatic, 2023
    Kemi Onabulé
    Self Portrait As A Lunatic, 2023
    Oil on canvas
    62 x 49 cm
    24 3/8 x 19 1/4 in
  • Kemi Onabulé, A Time To Think, 2023
    Kemi Onabulé
    A Time To Think, 2023
    Oil on canvas
    61 x 49 cm
    24 x 19 1/4 in
  • Kemi Onabulé, Her Beauty Can Only Be Felt, 2023
    Kemi Onabulé
    Her Beauty Can Only Be Felt, 2023
    Oil on canvas
    61 x 49 cm
    24 x 19 1/4 in
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Guts Exhibitions 
Press
CV

Born 1995 in London. Lives and Works in London. 

 

Education 

2016 BA (Hons), Fine Art: Painting, Wimbledon College of Art, London, UK

 

Solo Exhibitions 

2023 The Lunatics, Guts Gallery, London, UK

2022 Arcadia, Sim Smith, London, UK

2020 Arrival on the Beach, Guts Gallery, London, UK

Selected Group Exhibitions 

2022
Shrubs, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, USA

Matches Struck Unexpectedly In The Dark, One Room Gallery, London, UK​

2021

Saw It Hang Down There, Bode Projects, Berlin, Germany

Reality Check, Guts Gallery/Anderson Contemporary, London, UK

Into The Light of The Present Day, Oliver Projects, London, UK

Underpinned by Movements of Freighters, The Florence Trust, London, UK

Cluster-Phobia, Newington Green Meeting House, London, UK

Get A Load of This, Daniel Raphael Gallery, London, UK

For The Many Not The Few, Guts Gallery, London, UK

2020

Untitled (But Loved), Bosse & Baum, London, UK

In Response, The Viewing Room, London, UK 

2019
They Catch Feelings, I Catch Bodies, Sim Smith, London, UK

2016

Wimbledon College of Art BA Degree Show, London, UK

2015

The Contemporary Portrait, Thompson's Gallery, London, UK

  

Awards 

2021

Jackson's Painting Prize, Shortlisted 

2017

Hix Award, Shortlisted 

Ingram Young Artist Prize, Shortlisted 

2016

Clyde & Co Art Awards, Shortlisted