Out of the Ordinary - Spectacular Craft at the V&A: Olu Amoda Installation

This joint V&A and Crafts Council exhibition featured eight international artists who place meticulous craftsmanship at the heart of their work. On display were unusual and beautifully crafted installations. The artists take inspiration from the everyday, transforming their subjects using traditional techniques in unexpected ways.

Olu Amoda is a sculptor, a designer and a teacher from Nigeria. He makes work from materials salvaged from the scrapyards and streets of Lagos, taking his inspiration from daily life in the city.

Amoda works with what he finds, only deciding on the form of a new piece when he has gathered its component parts. He welds and assembles things such as discarded nails and old locks into intricate sculpture and solid security doors designed to keep thieves out. He is interested in the former lives of the objects he uses and in the new meanings they take on when they are brought together.

'Nails are used in my work as a metaphor. They have survived generations and remain one of the most ideal and enduring pieces of engineering. Nails depend on the notion of shared responsibilities, like ants. Small but lethal, a nail is able to defend itself, but yields to will of the craftsman. What we call little things are merely the causes of great things: they are the beginning, the embryo and the point of departure, which generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence.'

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Entertainment

Tags:

• V&A
• victoria
• albert
• museum
• craft
• Olu
• Amoda
• design
• contemporary
• art
• installation
• exhibition
• spectacular
• artists
• craftmanship
• sculpture
• salvage
• Lagos
• scrapyards
• welding
• nails